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LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT 
AND EDUCATION 



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LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT 
AND EDUCATION 



BY 



M. V. O'SHEA 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 

AUTHOR OF "EDUCATION AS ADJUSTMENT," 

"DYNAMIC FACTORS IN EDUCATION." ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1907 

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J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwict Ss Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S. A. 



Co 

HARRIET, VINCENT, STANLEY 

AND 

KATHARINE 



PREFACE 

A number of years ago the writer of this volume, being 
then in charge of the model department of a training school, 
undertook a series of experiments relating to the teaching 
of language in its various aspects. At that time he searched 
diligently for literature treating of the psychology of lin- 
guistic development, but aside from a few incomplete 
studies by Preyer and others he could find little that proved 
of much service. It seemed to him then that it would be 
worth while to carefully observe a child from the beginning 
of expressive activity on until he acquired a mastery of his 
mother tongue in its vocal and auditory forms, and en- 
deavor to determine what psychological principles were 
illustrated in this development. Soon the opportunity 
was presented to make such observations, not only upon 
one child, but in due course upon several children, with the 
result that it has been possible for the author to gather con- 
siderable material upon various phases of mental develop- 
ment as revealed in linguistic function. In the first part 
of the present volume it has been the aim to organize this 
material, to compare it with that gained by others working 
in this field, and to indicate in detail the principles of mental 
development which may be deduced from it, and which 
seem to explain it. 



VIU PREFACE 

In the beginning of this investigation it was the inten- 
tion to carry it along only until the children specially ob- 
served reached the school age, when they would begin to 
study the language arts. However, this point having been 
reached, it seemed that they had but just entered the 
most interesting and important stage of linguistic develop- 
ment, viewed from the standpoint either of psychology 
or of education. So it was decided to keep on with the 
observations and experiments until the older children 
particularly had acquired facility in reading, writing, 
spelling, and composition. The author did some of the 
experimental teaching himself, and the rest was done under 
his direct observation. At the same time the linguistic 
progress of a number of the companions and schoolmates 
of these children, who were taught by somewhat different 
methods, was noted; and the organization of the material 
gained in this way, and its interpretation from the stand- 
points of contemporary educational and developmental 
psychology, comprises most of the second part of the vol- 
mne. During the past year especially the author investi- 
gated the methods of language teaching in schools at home 
and abroad, and he has incorporated the results of his ob- 
servations, with criticisms, in the last chapters of the 
book. 

It will be apparent at a glance that an attempt has been 
made to cover a large field, so that a view of linguistic de- 
velopment as a whole might be gained. Of necessity. 



PREFACE IX 

many details, in themselves of interest and importance, 
alike for psychology and for education, had to be omitted, 
and general principles only developed. It has not been 
easy to avoid dwelling too long upon minutiae, considering 
the scope of the task to be accomplished; and the author 
has doubtless not succeeded in all cases, though he has 
endeavored so to do. The material collected would have 
permitted of a more minute treatment of most topics, and 
if it seems desirable this may be undertaken later. 

With a view to assisting the reader in grasping readily 
the more important principles discussed, a liberal use 
has been made of sectional and marginal headings, and 
summaries at the close of each chapter. It has been the 
constant aim also to be temperate in the citation of illus- 
trative examples, so that one might not lose his way amid 
a confusion of concrete instances. 

The volume has been carefully read in manuscript by 
Professor W. C. Bagley, and by the author's colleagues, 
Professor Walter F. Dearborn and Mr. Frederick W. Roe, 
to each of whom many thanks are due for helpful sugges- 
tions and criticisms. 

M. V. O'SHEA. 

Madison, Wisconsin, 
August, 1907. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

NON-REFLECTIVE PROCESSES IN LINGUISTIC 
DEVELOPMENT 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Pre-linguistic Expression i 

1. Reflex Expressional Activity i 

The undifferentiated squall — The beginning of particu- 
larization — The physical qualities of early vocal activity — 
Agreement among children in the first vocal combinations 
— The motive of expression at the outset. 

2. Beginnings of Purposeful Expressional Activity . . ii 

The appearance of awareness of the environment — The 
advent of the smile — The first steps in language proper — 
The late acquisition of conventional words. 

3. First Efforts at Interpretation of Expression . . .17 

Response to vocal timbre — Response to facial expression. 
Summary. 

CHAPTER II 

Early Reaction upon Conventional Language ... 22 

1. Spontaneous Vocal Activity 22 

Voice play — The development of voluntary out of spon- 
taneous vocal activity — The linguistic ability of the year-old 
child — The visual factor in the child's early linguistic imita- 
tions. 

2. Linguistic Invention 30 

The distinction between play and invention, 
xi 



XU CONTENTS 

PAGE 

3. Interpretation of Conventional Language * > * » 33 
The understanding of words as symbols — The repertoire 
of children of different ages. 
Summary. 

CHAPTER III 
Parts of Speech in Early Linguistic Activity • • • 39 

1. Sentence-words 39 

Methods of classifying the child's vocabulary — Sentence 
words in adult and primitive speech — Grammatical function 
performed by gesture, etc. — The child's attitude toward things 
at first. 

2. Nominal and Verbal Function 46 

Substantive and predicate function undifferentiated at first 
— The function of the exclamation — Imitation of differentiated 
speech without differentiation in thought — Omission of the 
copula in early sentence construction. 

3. Interjectional Function 54 

The views of observers — The interjectional element in 
much of the child's speech. 

CHAPTER IV 
Parts of Speech in Early Linguistic Activity (concluded) . 57 

1. Adjectival and Adverbial Function 57 

Requirements for the correct use'of the "modifier" — The 
development of particularizing function — The adjectives 
earliest used — The development of adverbial function. 

2. Prepositional and Conjunctional Function .... 64 

The absence of connective terms in the child's speech — 
The emergence of prepositional elements — Grammatical vs. 
psychological function in the use of prepositions — The ap- 
pearance of conjunctional function — Conjunctions earliest 
employed. 

3. Pronominal Function 73 

The late differentiation of the pronoun — Pronominal func- 
tion first discharged by pantomime, etc. — From pantomime 



CONTENTS XIU 

PACK 

through the nominative to the pronominative stage — The 
order of development in the use of pronouns. 
Summary. 

CHAPTER V 
Inflection, Agreement, and Word Order .... 86 

X. The Function of Inflection 86 

The specialization of sentence elements — Specialization 
of the parts of speech themselves to express special relations. 

2. Inflection of the Noun and Pronoun 89 

Three factors operating in the child's use of inflected forms 
— Inflection of the noun — Inflection of the pronoun. 

3. Inflection of the Verb 93 

Special difficulties in mastering verbal forms — Difficulties 
with tense forms — The adjectival character of some tense 
forms — The development of particular tense forms — Mode 
in early speech — Auxiliary verbs — Inflecting nouns so that 
they may discharge verbal function. 

4. Inflection of the Adjective and the Adverb . . . 105 

Comparative function in the beginning — The first inflected 
forms — The superlative degree. 

5. Agreement in Early Speech .110 

Violations of the principles of concord — The relative pro- 
noun. 

6. Word Order in Early Sentence Construction . . .113 

The lack of uniformity in word order — The sequence of 
elementary ideas expressed in the sentence. 

7. Word Order in Negative Constructions . . . .117 

The affirmative form precedes the negative — The double 
negative. 
Summary. 

CHAPTER VI 

Development of Meaning for Verbal Symbols . . . 124 

I. Inheritance of Meanings 124 

Linguistic inheritance is of a social, not a physical, char- 
acter — Evolutionary changes in meanings. 



XIV CONTENTS 



PAGE 



2. Extent and Content of Meaning in the Child's Symbols . 127 

Abstract symbols often have concrete meaning for the child 
at the outset — Or else their significance is apprehended in 
only a very indefinite way — Concrete terms commonly have 
far too broad extent in the beginning — And again they may 
have very narrow extent — Parallelism in evolution of ideas 
and linguistic ability. 

3. Reaction of the Alter in determining Meanings . • 137 

The principle illustrated — The moulding of words into 
proper shape — The child's vocabulary as a growing organism. 

4. Apperception in the Gaining of New Symbols . . . 142 

The general principle of apperception appUed to linguistic 
experiences — Meanings of specialized terms are determined 
in part by general attitudes. 

5. Meaning as felt before it becomes Definitive . . . 146 

The child's " I know, but I cannot tell " is often psycho- 
logically true — Illustrations of principles. 

6. Some Special Difficulties in Meaning . . . .158 

Difficulties with words descriptive of time relations — Diffi- 
culties with particular constructions. 
Summary. 

PART II 

REFLECTIVE PROCESSES IN LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT 

CHAPTER VII 

Acquisition of Word-ideas in Reading 163 

1. The Attitude of the Novice toward Reading . . .163 

Visual verbal forms have little if any significance or indi- 
viduality for the novice — Interest in reading is not native to 
the child. 

2. Initial Processes in mastering Reading . . . .168 

Language-unities in reading — Visual perception of verbal 
forms pecuHarly difficult — The exploitation of literal forms 
— The motor factor in gaining word-ideas — Historic schemes 
for teaching the alphabet. 



CONTENTS XV 

PAGE 

3. Language-unities in teaching Reading . . . • i77 

Wastefulness of the alphabetic method — Relation of word 
and sentence in the beginning — Lower unities must be 
gained as functional in higher ones — The mastery of the less 
important words in sentence-unities. 

4. Learning the Functions of Literal Symbols . . .186 

The purpose of " phonic analysis " — The danger of formal 
phonic drill — The method of phonic analysis. 
Summary. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Acquisition of Graphic Word-ideas 194 

1. Automatic Facility in Graphic Expression . . . .194 

The character of graphic word-ideas — The method of 
attaining automaticity in execution. 

2. Imagery Functioning in Graphic Expression . . .196 

Visual imagery — Kinsesthetic imagery — Auditory and 
vocal imagery — The interdependence of linguistic modes as 
revealed in aphasias — The method of teaching spelling. 
3 Psychological Relation of Reading and Spelling . . 203 

The acquisition of visual is more rapid than of graphic 
word-ideas — Phonic analysis in spelling — Teaching spelling 
incidentally. 

Summary. 

CHAPTER IX 

Development of Meaning for Word-ideas in Reading . .211 

1. Coalescence of Word- and Meaning-ideas . . . .211 

The special problem — Conditions favoring coalescence — 
Reading without translation — The introduction of symbols 
must not go beyond the learner's range of experience — 
Content cannot determine wholly the introduction of word- 
ideas, 

2. Acquisition of Meaning by Definition 219 

The process of learning by defining — The most economical 
method of gaining meanings. 



XVI CONTENTS 

PAGE 

3. Oral Ks. ** Silent " Reading 223 

Simplifying the processes involved in reacting upon words 
— In reading, eye-mindedness must be cultivated. 
Summary. 

CHAPTER X 

Development of Efficiency in Oral Expression . . .232 

1. Efficiency as Special, not General 232 

Profound thought but dull expression — Efficiency limited 
to special situations. 

2. The Essential Factor in the Development of Efficiency . 236 

Efficiency due in a measure to native endowment — Effec- 
tive expression in group activities the first requisite. 

3. Development of Efficiency through the General Activities 

of the School 241 

The shortcomings of the school in linguistic training — 
Linguistic training in all the studies of the school. 

4. Development of Efficiency through the Study of Linguistic 

Forms 246 

The methods employed in the schools — Study and use 
a unitary process — The merits and defects of "Tell it in 
your own words " — The influence of models generally de- 
clines after adolescence — Linguistic training in the sec- 
ondary school. 

5. Effect of Reading upon Efficiency 253 

Reading brings verbal elements to focal attention — It soon 
becomes more complex than speech — The conditions under 
which reading will influence oral expression. 

Summary. 

CHAPTER XI 

Processes in Graphic Expression 261 

I. The Interdependence of the Several Linguistic Modes . 261 
The relation of writing to speech — Does skill in one mode 
insure skill in a different one? — The first step in gaining 



CONTENTS XVU 

PAGH 

written expression — Graphic expression is comparatively 
slow and clumsy. 

2. Simple t^s. Complex Units in Graphic Expression . 268 

Structural vs. psychological simplicity — The problem of 
the language-unities in teaching written expression. 

3. Punctuation 273 

The attitude of the novice toward punctuation — The de- 
velopment of a feeling for punctuation. 
Summary. 

CHAPTER XII 

Development of Efficiency in Composition .... 279 

1. Esthetic Function of Language 27 

The Spencerian theory respecting style — It undervalues 
the aesthetic function of language — Expression often secures 
reaction without imagery. 

2. Figurative Expression . . . . .... 285 

The development of a dynamic style — Factors which in- 
fluence figurative activity — The study of figurative expres- 
sion — Method of training for efficiency in written expression 
— The influence of temperament and feeling upon style. 

Sumjnary. 

CHAPTER XIII 

Acquisition of a Foreign Tongue 298 

1. The Attitude of the Individual toward a Foreign Tongue 298 

The child learns the native tongue because he has need of 
it — But usually he feels no need of the foreign tongue — As 
ordinarily taught, the foreign tongue must be translated into 
the native tongue — Different purposes in teaching ancient 
and modern tongues. 

2. Economy and Efficiency in the Mastery of a Foreign 

Tongue 304 

The auditory and vocal forms should be gained at the 
outset — Gaining a " reading knowledge " only of a foreign 



XVm CONTENTS 

PAGE 

tongue — Composition may prove a hindrance to reading — 
Formal grammar and rhetoric in the study of a foreign tongue 
— Intensiveness vs. extensiveness in the reading of a foreign 
tongue — Literal translation of a foreign tongue. 
3. Lessons from Europe in the teaching of Language . . 320 

Practical vs. philological values — Beginning the study of 
language early — The disadvantages of early grammatical 
study — Naturalness in teaching the classic languages. 

Summary. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 329 

INDEX 333 



LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT 
AND EDUCATION 



PART I 

NON-REFLECTIVE PROCESSES IN LIN- 
GUISTIC DEVELOPMENT 



CHAPTER I 

PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 

I. Reflex Expressional Activity 
It is frequently remarked by students of mental develop- The undiirer- 

^ entiated 

ment that when the child sets out upon the journey of squaii. 
life, he finds himself in possession of a quite effective mode 
of reveahng his simple needs. His earliest vocal expres- 
sion, as poet and philosopher and scientist * have ob- 
served, is a cry, in which there is little if any modulation 
or intonation or " distinctive timbre." It is only a wail 
or " squall " which he employs in an undifferentiated way 
to express all of his experiences. But really the infant 
may be said to have but one sort of experience — dis- 
comfort — which moves him to express himself. During 
the first days he is ill-adjusted to his new environments, 

* Sigismund, who was one of the first systematic observers of infant 
development, makes this observation in his "Kind und Welt": "Sobald 
das Kind zur Welt geboren ist, fangt es an gellcnd zu schreien." 

B I 



2 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

and his cry ^ is his instinctive method of directing attention 
to his distress. And it is probable that at the outset the 
varieties of discomfort which he experiences, or the sources 
thereof, are not distinguished one from another; hunger 
is not discriminated from rough clothing, for instance, 
nor colic from cold. 
The But in due course — usually before the fourth week is 

beginning of 

particuiari- completed^ — the trained ear can detect certain slight 

zation. ^ ^ 

variations in the primordial squall, special needs being 
denoted by characteristic intonation or timbre. It is 
possible as early as the fifth week, speaking generally, to 
distinguish the hunger squall from that expressive of 
other kinds of discomfort, so that an observant mother 
can tell whether her babe should have food, or medicine, 
or the services of the nurse simply. Perez reports a child 
who as early as the fifteenth day revealed hunger by a 
special modification of the original cry; but most observers 
have noted the beginning of differentiation of the primi- 
tive wail at a somewhat later period. Mrs. HalP noticed 
a peculiar timbre in the voice of her nine- weeks-old child 
when he was impatient, a different one when he was 

^ The poets have attached a variety of significations to the primitive 
cry. Some have said that it is a shout of joy, others that it is a protest, 
others that it is a song of triumph, and so on. But students, as Preyer, 
Tracy, and Major, for instance, regard it as a purely reflex act, without 
meaning so far as the infant is concerned. 

^ See, for instance. Major, "First Steps in Mental Growth," p. 284. 

^ See the Child Study Monthly, May, 1896-April, 1897. 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 3 

hungry, and a still different one when he was appealing 
to her for aid or care. Darwin ^ thought his boy volun- 
tarily modulated his voice in the eleventh week to indicate 
that he desired a certain object. Compayre ^ has not ob- 
served a clear differentiation of the various cries until 
toward the sixth month. President Hall ^ noted sixty-three 
variations in his son's vocal expressions before he was 
five months old. It is probable that the cry of hunger 
and that of colic are earliest individualized; the latter is 
seemingly more vehement, more violent than the former, or 
than any other ; but it is not possible to detect a marked 
difference in the elementary vocal qualities, as intonation, 
cadence, and so on. 

Leaving aside the matter of precise dates, it is enough 
for us here to recognize this first step in linguistic develop- 
ment, — the particularization of the original squall to 
express particular needs. It has already been indicated 
that out of the general cry of discomfort the hunger cry 
quite early emerges so that it can be distinguished by the 
mother or governess. As development proceeds, various 
specialized cries gradually make their appearance; and 
while it is impossible to tell just the day when the cry of 
fear, for example, appears, still there is no mistaking it 
as early as the beginning of the third month at the latest. 

1 "Mind," Vol. 11, p. loi. 

2 "Later Infancy of the Child," pp. 72-73. 
^ Fed. Sem., Vol. I, 1891, pp. 132-133. 



4 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Preyer* thought his son Axel could employ particular 
sounds in his fifth week to express hunger, pain, cold, 
joy, and desire. Darwin could not detect any difference 
between the cry of hunger and that of pain before the 
eleventh week in the case of one infant, and a little later 
in the case of another, although in the sixth week he noticed 
a soft murmur indicative of joy, which he ascribed to the 
development of recognition. Some observers have re- 
ported hearing the cry of anger as early as the sixth week; 
but it is probable that this is generally differentiated at a 
somewhat later date. For a considerable period the child 
seeks help, in his instinctive way, when he is in need, 
but he does not assume an aggressive or combative or 
angry attitude toward his environment; he is rather de- 
pendent and suppliant. So, too, it is doubtful if vocal 
expressions for joy in any true sense appear until the ex- 
pressions for hunger, colic, fear, and it may be anger, 
are individualized. The infant seems to have ready- 
made a mechanism for expressing discomfort, but he 
must wait upwards of two months before he can 
reveal pleasurable feeling vocally, even in an elementary 
way. 

It is significant that during the first few weeks one in- 
fant's cries cannot be distinguished from those of another 
so far, at any rate, as the ordinary ear is concerned. The 

* See his "The Development of the Mind of the Child" (translated 
by Brown), Vol. II, p. loi. 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 5 

cry is quite devoid of individual color or timbre, a point 
mentioned by Garbini and Egger. It is best represented 
by the symbol a, though some regard it as more complex. 
Preyer, for instance, represents it by u (as oo in book) 
and a (as ai in fair), making it ud, ud, Garbini locates the 
cry of the newborn child between }a^ and /a^, and it remains 
here for two or three months. Wilson * represents the 
cry on the musical staff as follows: — 



i 



B r ^ 



1^ Heu - 6 Heu - 6 Heu - 6 
During the first week or two the original sound d is 
modified mainly in respect to volume and intensity to ex- 
press different experiences; but before the second month 
the infant begins to add to his repertoire, and once started, 
he gives himself to it for many months. The process of 
development is earliest manifested in differentiation of the 
original a sound, producing other vowel sounds of both 
higher and lower range, a point noted by Lukens,^ Tracy ,^ 
Ament,^ Meumann,^ Allaire,® and others. Then as he 

1 See "Prehistoric Art," Report U.S. Nat. Mus., 1896, p. 516. 

2 " A Preliminary Report on the Learning of Language," Fed. Sem., 
Vol. Ill, pp. 424-460. 

3 American Journal of Psychology^ Vol. VI, pp. 69-93. 

* "Die Entwickelung von Sprechen und Denken beim Kinde," p. 2ir. 
' "Die Entstehung der ersten Wortbedeutungen beim Kinde," p. 11. 

• "Des Premiers Rudiments du langage infantin," Bull Soc. d'Anthr. 
de Paris, 1890, pp. 485-490. 



6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

goes on he gradually introduces consonantal sounds, labials 

first, without doubt ; therj probably the gutturals, the easier 

of them ; then the dentals, and finally the nasals.^ Of 

The physi- course, these several varieties of consonants are not rigidly 

cal quali- 
ties of marked off from one another as the child masters them, but 

early vocal 

activity. jn general he probably executes them in the order given.^ 
They are always combined with the original (i or some of 
its differentiated forms. Preyer, Pollock, and others have 
attempted to indicate in detail the child's progress in de- 
veloping new sounds and in combining them; but it is 
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do this successfully. 
It may be noticed that in attempting to express the sounds 
made by an infant an adult will inevitably interpret them 
in terms of the nearest literal representatives of his own 
speech. Perhaps no adult can even listen to an infant 
with an absolutely unprejudiced ear; he is likely to hear 
through the medium of his own usage. The child's early 
vocalizations differ so markedly from the adult's in vol- 
ume, cadence, intonation, and so on that to attempt to 
express them in symbols which are used to indicate the 
quality and movement of the mature voice is practically 
certain to convey a wrong impression to the reader. I 
have tested a number of adults in the execution of the 
sounds which Preyer, by means of literal representation, 

* See the author's " Dynamic Factors in Education," Chap. IX, for a 
detailed presentation of this point. 

2 See Tracy, "Psychology of Childhood," pp. 1 19-157, especially 
p. 127, for evidence bearing on this point. 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 7 

ascribes to his son Axel, and I am confident they all 
went wide of the mark.* 

But while we cannot graphically represent these sounds 
exactly, or analyze them fully as they grow more complex, 
we can still make out what they mean in a general way. 
Of course, we are aided in our interpretation by the child's 
bodily attitudes, his facial expression, his intonation, and 
the like. It is a commonplace of modern psychology 
that the fundamental emotions are revealed in character- 
istic motor attitudes and complexes; and the vocal are 
probably always congruent in meaning with the general 
motor expressions. If the mother does not at the outset 
recognize the angry cry as such, she will soon learn to 
understand it through the accompanying fadal and,.b_odily 
demonstrations. Again, a child as early as the third month 

^ Mrs. Moore says, touching this point : " At the close of the fourth 
month it was my impression that the child had made well-nigh all the 
sounds which occur in the language. Yet I had the exact record of but 
few which had been pronounced as isolated sounds, or as short syllables, 
and so distinctly as to render their identification easy and certain." 
"Mental Development of a Child," Monograph Supplement to the Psy- 
chological Review, No. 3, 1896, p. 115. 

Egger found it impossible to express in the letters of the alphabet 
many of the sounds he heard from the fifth week on. It may be of in- 
terest to recall in this connection that Stanley Hall (see notes on the 
"Study of Infants," Fed. Sent., Vol. I, p. 133) declares he distinguished 
sixty-three different sounds made by one of his children before he was 
six months old. I have tried often to perform this feat in my observa- 
tions, but I have found it impossible to unravel the tangle of sound com- 
binations and he sure of the elementary sounds to any such extent as 
reported by Dr. Hall and others. 



8 



LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Agreement 
among chil- 
dren in the 
first vocal 
combina- 
tions. 



will sometimes protest through voice and body against 
being put into his cradle from his mother's arms. Also, 
if parent or nurse comes within range of his vision, he will 
" beg " to be taken up. The agitation of his arms, legs, 
and features and the " pleading " tone in his voice indi- 
cate his desires clearly enough, and it is not long before the 
parent can tell from the vocal expression alone that he 
wishes to be taken. By the sixth month or so the " teas- 
ing " quality becomes differentiated so that it can be 
easily recognized; and specialization goes on until by the 
close of the first year one may be in a room apart from the 
child, but hearing him tease it is possible to tell whether 
he is pleading to be taken or to be given some object he 
desires. 

Attempts have been made by some writers to show that 
in the beginning all children use similar combinations of 
sounds in expression of similar experiences, the implication 
being that they must travel over the same route in acquir- 
ing language. V This suggests the story, credited to Herodo- 
tus, of the experiment of Psammetichus, king of Egypt. 
He placed his two children under the care of a shepherd 
who was not to utter a sound in their presence, but who was 
to note the first word they spoke after a period of total iso- 
lation from human associations. This word happened to 
be hekos, the Phrygian word for bread, and the king con- 
cluded that the Phrygian must be the parent of all lan- 
guages. But most observers have noticed that the earliest 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 9 

combinations used by children in our day are formed by 
combining the consonantal sounds denoted by m, p, and 
h with the original vowel a sound, making md-mdj pd-pdj 
and bd-bd. All children use them without any objective 
reference at first, but the parents and nurse seize upon them, 
and attach them to particular objects; and by employing 
them in this manner, they impress them on the infant. 
But when we get beyond these few combinations, there is 
no general agreement. Miss Shinn * found her niece utter- 
ing ^^ nd-nd-nd^^ as a protest, or expression of unwillingness; 
but S. used this combination at seven months when he was 
in the best of spirits, and his caretaker attached it to her- 
self, as her name was Anna. Then the children who fol- 
lowed S. were taught nd-nd-nd, as the caretaker's name, 
through the action of the caretaker herself, and the parents 
and brothers and sisters, in repeating it and attaching it 
to the caretaker. Axel Preyer ^ used " atta " when anything 
disappeared from vision, and later he used " Uo, t-tUj jiu " ; 
while Miss Shinn' s niece ^ used for the same sort of ex- 
perience, ^^ M-gm^' or '' Ng-gug.^^ Instances might be 
multiplied indefinitely to show that the objective reference 
of particular combinations is at the outset entirely indi- 
vidualistic, except for the few cases indicated, and even in 
these it is determined by the action of the particular social 

^ "Biography of a Baby," p. 225. 

' See Preyer, op. cit., p. 131. 

' "Biography of a Baby," p. 226. 



lO 



LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



The motive 
of expres- 
sion at the 
outset. 



environment, and not by any purpose or plan on the 
child's part. People take what he produces in a spon- 
taneous way, give it a meaning, and then teach it to 
him. 

It should be emphasized that in the early weeks vocal 
expression always denotes some need of the organism. 
It is an indication of discomfort of some sort.* The feel- 
ings accompanying a congruent relation with the environ- 
ment are apparently yet very weak, unless mere animal 
satisfaction — a kind of passive or possibly negative condi- 
tion — can be called feeling. This animal contentment 
is revealed in what some have called grunting, though it is 
hardly defined enough for this. It seems to be the most 
general and characterless sound which the child utters. 
An infant of three weeks who has had enough of the right 
sort of food, and who does not suffer from colic or cold or 
too rough or too tight clothing sleeps almost continually 
between feeding times, and it is only immediately after a 
full meal that he gives expression at all to his feeling of satis- 
faction. He is at this period only a subjective creature,^ 
having little or no desire for expression so long as all goes 
well with him physically. He shows no awareness of an 



* Compare Moore, op. cit., p. 57. 

' Compare with this statement the views of the following : Baldwin, 
"Mental Development, Methods and Processes," pp. 15-34; Guibert, 
"Mental Evolution," in Bull. Soc. d'Anthr. de Paris, 1892, p. 714 ei seq.; 
Valentin, " Psychology of the Child," Revtie des Etudes Philos. et Soc.y 
March, 1898. 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION II 

environing world of persons or even of things to be com- 
muned with. He manifests no tendency to share expe- 
rience through any medium of expression. His vocal is 
but one phase of general motor excitement. SqualHng is 
always accompanied by agitation throughout the muscu- 
lar system, never by relaxation or absence of movement 
in legs, arms, and features. ] 

2. Beginnings of Purposeful ^ Expressional Activity 

Toward the close of the second month (some observers The appear- 
ance of 
make it a little earlier) the infant begins to attend through awareness 

of the envi- 

both sight and hearing to the world about him. The ronment. 
mother's face is perhaps the first object really to attract 
attention, though a candle or handkerchief may momen- 
tarily arrest the infant's wandering eyes. But there is no 
doubt of his *' studying " his mother's features. His eyes 
are kept upon her face for many minutes at a time, and you 

^ From one point of view instincts and reflex actions are, of course, 
purposeful. They serve to indicate organic needs, and to influence the 
environment so as to have these needs attended to. But it is hardly 
necessary to add that in the child's own consciousness instincts and reflex 
actions are without purpose ; he does not conceive ends which he strives to 
attain through definite, correlated activities. The term " purpose " should, 
it seems, be applied only to those activities which the individual performs 
consciously for specific ends, which in the course of his individual experi- 
ence have come to appear valuable to him. Reflex action, then, may be 
useful but hardly purposeful ; phylogenetically it may have been purpose- 
ful at some point, but ontogenetically it is really mechanical. It is the 
product of ancestral, not of individual experience ; it is a matter of physi- 
cal heredity as completely as the form or structure of any part of the 
soma, which makes the term "purposeful " inapplicable to it. 



12 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

can observe them sweeping around from one prominent 
point to another, but keeping within the facial boundary 
lines. The muscles of arms and legs are relaxed ; and while 
engaged in this exploitation, the infant expresses in his 
motor attitudes what in the adult we would call uncertainty, 
curiosity, and wonder. But it is significant that no sound 
of any sort escapes him, unless he becomes frightened. It 
seems evident that an attitude of wonder or uncertainty 
is not favorable to vocal expression. There is neither ac- 
tive sympathy with nor antagonism toward the environ- 
ment, and so there is no occasion for expression. In such 
a case, the child is arrested in his reactions, since it is not 
as yet apparent what is to be done with reference to the 
immediate situation. In this connection there may be 
stated a principle which will be often illustrated concretely 
in the following chapters; namely, that all possible varieties 
of expression are indications of an active or dynamic atti- 
tude of the individual toward his environments. In the 
beginning, as intimated above, vocalization is just one 
phase of a general motor reaction upon situations; and 
when measured in terms of energy expended, or motor 
systems involved, it is always but a minor part of the total 
expression. But with development the vocal elements in 
expression tend to become more and more prominent^ and the 
general motor accompaniments in many reactions gradually 
subside, at least after the fifth or sixth year. The vocal 
elements alone come gradually to serve the purpose of the 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 1 3 

original total motor complex. But this point must be 
worked out in detail as we go on. 
Soon after the beginning of the attentive attitude toward The advent 

, , , - , ., mi • • 1 /» of the smile. 

the mother's face the smile appears. This is the first genu- 
ine expression of agreeable or pleasant feeling in reaction 
upon the objective world, and the child employs it as a 
sort of greeting to those who care for him. Mantegazza/ 
in his study of expression, divides human life into distinct 
periods, the first of which is infancy and childhood, char- 
acterized by good-humor and consciousness of perfect 
health. Now, it is certain that during the first six weeks 
there is no expression of good humor, as I have intimated 
above. Mantegazza should have included in his scheme 
a period which is characterized by general curiosity or 
wonder, and not at all by good humor. But putting this 
question aside, it may be said that the infant's smile seems 
to be an expression of confidence in the parent; at least the 
parent never fails so to interpret it. It is always an occa- 
sion for rejoicing when the first smile is detected, for it 
denotes to all who behold it the birth of a new attitude in 
the child. It is probable that the first true smile is the 
expression of a marked change taking place in the child's 
adjustment to his environments. It suggests a developing 
objectivity in consciousness, the beginning of an awareness 
of a social world without to be taken account of and 
adapted to or manipulated in some manner. Sigismund 

* See his "Physiognomy and Expression," p. 118. 



proper. 



14 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

made the first epoch in the child's life to extend from birth 
to the first smile, and other students, like Schultze,^ for 
instance, have adopted a similar view. 
The first At about this period, contemporaneous with the appear- 

steps in 

language ance of the smile, the first step in the development of lan- 
guage proper is taken. The child makes an effort, ap- 
parently a conscious or deliberate effort, to respond through 
vocalization to those who entertain him. One can see him 
at this period smiling back into his mother's beaming coun- 
tenance, and uttering purring sounds and grunts and 
fragments of laughter. It is at this time that he begins to 
purse his lips and command his tongue, seemingly trying 
to make sounds. Egger must have had this period in mind, 
though he locates it considerably earlier than the time here 
given, when he speaks of the transition from cry to voice. 
All the fundamental characteristics of language are pres- 
ent in these first attempts at speech. They never occur 
except when the child is in a pleasant mood; and in the 
beginning at any rate they require the presence of persons 
for their stimulation. But after a time (Mrs. Moore says 
as early as the eighth week ^) the child " coos " and 
" crows " and " plays " with vocal sounds merely for the 
pleasure he gets out of the exercise as an end in itself, with- 
out reference to the needs of communication. Miss Shinn ^ 

* See "Die Sprache des Kindes," Leipzig, 1880. 
2 Op. cit., p. 115. 

* Op. cit., p. 225. 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 1 5 

remarks of her niece that as *' she came to ten months old 

she was a greater chatterer than ever, pouring out strings 

of meaningless syllables in joy or sorrow with marvellous 

changes and inflections." Many observers speak of the 

spontaneous " babblings " of children from six months 

on, the term itself suggesting a playful use of vocalizations. 

This has been marked in the children I have observed, 

and I regard it as of primary importance in linguistic 

development. 

As the child develops, the amplitude of his spontaneous The late ac- 
quisition 

expression continually increases; but up until the eighth of conven- 
tional 

or ninth month his speech is not modelled in any particular words. 

upon the special patterns presented in the formal adult 
speech used in his environment. Preyer thought his 
child imitated him as early as the fourth month; but the 
majority of observers have not noticed linguistic imitation, 
at any rate, earlier than the period indicated. Before this 
time the child is unable to use conventional words, unless 
we should call some of our exclamatory sounds words. 
However, in the matter of intonation, modulation, accent, 
which depend upon the particular emotional value of par- 
ticular experiences, the child of six months comes quite 
close, within his range, to the models presented by the 
adults with whom he is associated. When he is greatly 
pleased, his exclamations ring out merrily; when he wants 
to be taken, his call is stern, commanding, impelling; 
when he is frightened, his cry is full of alarm, and so on. 



1 6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Given any fundamental feeling and the child is an adept 
in all the arts of expressing it, save in the single matter 
of the employment of formal, conventional, verbal sym- 
bols. Even when he begins to use conventional symbols, 
he supplements them very generously with gesture and 
intonation, making these latter aids do for verbal comple- 
ments and inflections and modifiers of all sorts. This is 
what enables the novice to accomplish so much with such 
a small stock of conventional terms, and with scarcely 
any grammatical differentiation whatever. An observer 
of a year-old child may see illustrated every hour the prin- 
ciple involved in Preyer^s statement, — that his son in the 
beginning of his linguistic career employed the word atta 
to express eleven different meanings, each being distin- 
guished from the others by intonation and gesture.^ 

^ It may be remarked in passing that the chief thing in training expres- 
sion, leaving aside formal language for the present, is to awaken dominat- 
ing feeling; to develop emotional attitudes and establish them securely, 
and then the whole expressive apparatus — face, arms, hands, voice, 
posture — will cooperate in revealing it so that it may be correctly inter- 
preted by one's fellows. Our modern conception of human nature, on 
the expressive side, as presented by James, Lange, and their followers, 
regards emotion and its appropriate expression as but phases of a unitary 
process. We cannot to-day speak of emotion as having any existence 
even apart from motor realization. However this may be, we note, as 
we follow the child in his development, that as feeling becomes differen- 
tiated he finds ready at hand an elaborate mechanism for expression. It 
is probable that the expression of joy, of confidence, of friendship, of 
curiosity, of fear, of anger, of desire, and so on, cannot be improved in 
the young child by any amount of training. These modes of expression 
seem to have been perfected throughout ages of racial practice, as modern 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 1 7 

3. First Efforts at Interpretation of Expression 

Thus far mention has been made only of the initial stages Response to 
in the child's revelation to those about him of his more vital 
experiences. Before proceeding further along this line 
we need to glance at his method of responding to, or inter- 
preting, the expressions of others. It was intimated above 
that for the first three months the child is quite indifferent 
to his social environment; he makes no response thereto 
save in the crudest instinctive manner. There being no 
social environment for him, there are no expressions to 
interpret. But upon the advent of the objective epoch 
already alluded to, when the world without commences to 
claim the infant's attention, the expressions of the alter 
begin to play an important role in his reactions. As early 
as the fourth month a child can be made to react in a terri- 
fied way at the sound of a loud, harsh command. I have 
many times made the experiment of producing a mod- 
writers like Darwin, Mantegazza, Baldwin, Dewey, and others appear 
to maintain ; and we need have little concern about them directly. Our 
concern must rather be with the attitudes and reactions of which they are 
severally the expression. We do not refer here, of course, to the expres- 
sion of ideas pure and simple. Heredity has equipped the individual 
with the means and methods of expressing adequately emotional expe- 
rience ; but she has left him rather destitute of effective means of portray- 
ing intellectual experience, at least when it attains to any considerable 
degree of complexity. Articulate speech alone is adapted well to this 
purpose, though gesture and pantomime are of some service in revealing 
simple intellectual content, as is shown in the use made of it by children 
and primitive men, and blind deaf-mutes, like Laura Bridgman and Helen 
KeUer. 

c 



1 8 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

erately loud noise, with a hammer or similar object, close 
to a four-months-old child to see if it was the loudness 
simply that produced fear, and I have found that a severe, 
*' cross " voice of less volume than the stroke of the 
hammer will ordinarily exert a more marked disturbing 
effect on him. There appears to be a genuine reflex re- 
sponse to the quality or timbre of a voice, as contrasted 
with mere noise; and this is quite striking in the reactions 
of the child after the fifth month. I can call " baby " to 
K. in such a way as to produce a joyous, smiling reaction ; 
or I can say it, without changing my facial expression ma- 
terially, so as to alarm her, and produce distress; and the 
principle seems to be universal in its application. The 
infant's concern with the vocal expression of his mother, 
say, is in its emotional significance, not in its intellectual 
content, so that he must take account of timbre rather 
than of the sounds as abstractions or symbols. A con- 
siderable period elapses before the child begins to be atten- 
tive to vocal expression as symbolic of objects or phenom- 
ena. In the course of development he shifts from concern 
wholly in the beginning with vocal quality to concern in 
the end mainly with conventional words or symbols. 
Response to The child seems to find meaning in the " voice " earlier 

facial expres- . , r . ^ e * ^ 

sion. than m any other mode of expression. One cannot frighten 

one's three- months-old babe by making ugly faces at him, 
notwithstanding the view advanced by some that very young 
children are afraid of big teeth and eyes and unkempt hair. 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 1 9 

Again, an infant will often not discriminate between the 
features of his mother and those of another woman; but 
he will detect a strange person by the way in which she 
holds him. And he appears also at a very early age to 
distinguish the voice of a stranger from that of his mother, 
though it is difhcult to detect just when this sort of discrimi- 
nation appears. But while the infant seems to be somewhat 
tardy in acquiring eye-mindedness to personal expression, 
he develops with extreme rapidity in this respect, once he 
gets under way. When a child of seven months becomes 
impatient and boisterous, one can often pacify him by look- 
ing at him with a disapproving countenance. He shows 
a remarkable apprehension of his mother's feeling as re- 
vealed through her attitudes and facial expression; and 
his appreciation grows ever more subtle as development 
proceeds. Many observers speak, in effect, of young chil- 
dren studying the faces of those who have charge of them, 
and before they are a year old they become adept in inter- 
preting the signs displayed thereon. It seems that, begin- 
ning with the sixth month, or thereabouts, and for many 
months thereafter, the child gets his cue to our attitudes 
more largely from our faces and voices than from our con- 
ventional language, though in time he comes to rely mainly, 
though not wholly, upon the latter. 

Summarizing the principles developed in the preceding Summary, 
pages, we have the following : — 

I. The first eight months or so of an infant's life may be 



20 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

regarded as a pre-linguistic period, during which he neither 
uses nor interprets conventional language. 

2. The infant's early vocal expression is reflex, and for the 
first two weeks at any rate is an undifferentiated squall, prob- 
ably expressive of some sort of discomfort. 

3. Between the second and fifth weeks the primitive squall 
begins to be differentiated to denote special forms of discom- 
fort, as colic, cold, hunger, fear, etc. From this point on, dif- 
ferentiation progresses rapidly, so that soon all of the child's 
vital experiences may be revealed in specialized ways. 

4. The infant's vocal register is at the outset limited to the 
sound indicated in a general way by a or tia. With develop- 
ment he goes up and down the vowel register for some time 
before he can execute consonantal sounds. The first of the 
latter to appear may be denoted in a general way by m, p, and b. 
The labials are probably first executed; then follow in order 
the gutturals, — the easier of them, — the dentals, and the 
nasals. 

5. The first articulate words used by most children are 
denoted in a general way by md-md, pd-pit, bd-bd, which, 
through the action of the social environment, are attached to 
definite objects. Further than this there does not appear to be 
any agreement in the combinations they employ to denote par- 
ticular experiences. 

6. The motive for all the infant's vocal expression is to 
secure relief from some discomfort. 

7. Purposeful expressional activity does not appear until 
the infant begins to be aware of an environing world of people 
and things to be reacted upon. The advent of this period is 
somewhere near the third month, and is signalized by the birth 
of the true smile. 



PRE-LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 21 

8. The first step in language proper is taken when the infant 
responds with vocal effort to his mother's salutations. At 
first he ''coos" only when he is stimulated by the presence of 
his mother's face; but soon he "plays" with vocal sounds 
whenever he is left to himself, thus in effect practising for con- 
ventional speech. 

9. But conventional words are not employe dbefore the 
completion of the first year ordinarily. The child spon- 
taneously makes combinations, and the alter gives them mean- 
ing by attaching them to particular experiences. 

10. The child of a year old is an adept in the use of grimace, 
gesture, intonation, etc., as aids in expression, thus compen- 
sating for his small stock of conventional terms. 

11. In training expression the aim must be to have the child 
enter fully into the situation to be portrayed, when the reflex 
expressive mechanism will function effectively. 

12. In the child's early efforts at interpreting the vocal ex- 
pressions of others, he relies wholly upon vocal timbre, at the 
outset, and this is in time supplemented by facial expression, 
and general motor attitudes. He does not, during the first 
year, respond to words as symbols. 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 

I. Spontaneous Vocal Activity 

Voice Play. In the acquisition of conventional language as a means 
of expression the child must gain a mastery, as we say, 
of verbal characters that have only a symbolic connection 
with the objects or phenomena to which they relate. How 
does he make a start in the conquest of these symbols? 
Certain principles already mentioned must be kept in mind 
in discussing this question. In the first place, nature has 
endowed the individual with a marked tendency toward 
vocal activity. Long before he can imitate conventional 
verbal forms he can and does indulge himself in a wide 
range of spontaneous vocal combinations. This primor- 
dial babbling, as Sully calls it, goes on quite irrespective 
of the particular vocal complexes used in the child's pres- 
ence. The voice play of the English child, the German 
child, the French child, and the Italian child is the same 
in essential features. Their vocalization is a '' riotous " 
or " wild " display of energy, as KussmauP would say, 
without reference to conventional Hnguistic models. This 

^ See his "Die Storungen der Sprache" (Leipzig, 1885), p. 46. 

22 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 23 

might be called the period of spontaneity (using Preyer's 
term) in linguistic development; though in speaking of it 
as a period it must be understood that it is not possible to 
set definite boundaries to it; to say just where it begins 
and where it ends. But yet spontaneity is the chief 
characteristic in vocal activity from the fifth month, say, 
to the third birthday or thereabouts, though it probably 
persists, in ever diminishing prominence, until the 
period of linguistic maturity is reached. 

There can be no doubt that the child finds pleasure in 
verbal exercise as an end in itself, which is in all likelihood 
due in some part to his consciousness of achievement — 
of conquest. As Groos puts it, the child experiences joy 
in being a cause, and ,this is probably felt, in an indefinite 
way, as early as the fifth month. Later, when he can say 
readily, and without tripping — " Peter Piper picked a 
peck of pickled peppers," etc., he behaves as though he 
had accomplished a difficult feat, much as when he runs 
a mile faster than a competitor, or makes a record in climb- 
ing a tree, or solving a puzzle. That is to say, achieve- 
ments in linguistic action are, in the pleasure they give, 
not unlike achievements in any other direction. The child, 
then, will play at vocalizing for the same reason funda- 
mentally that he plays at jumping or climbing or pound- 
ing. Happily, through this exercise he calls into play a 
great variety of coordinations of his vocal mechanism, and 
puts it in trim for executing later the conventional words 



24 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

and phrases current about him. It should be added that 
this tendency toward linguistic play is augmented when the 
child associates with children of about his own attainments. 
One may hear young children vying with one another to 
see who can produce the most intricate and elaborate com- 
binations, much as they compete in yeUing, or running, 
and so on. H., who did not see much of children until she 
was three, showed less interest in linguistic play during 
this period than the brothers and sisters who came after 
her. But even in her case the parents and nurse would 
catch up her accidental combinations, especially those that 
were amusing, and play with them, and this would have the 
effect to encourage her to greater vocal effort. But adults 
are not usually, it seems, as good stimulators of children in 
respect to this or any other allied activity as playfellows 
of similar age and abilities. 

It should be emphasized that in this vocal practice the 
outcome is not the fusion of object or action and its 
linguistic symbol; it is rather the development of vocal 
facility. One may hear a young child just gaining control 
of his vocal apparatus rehearse a word, as " mamma," 
for several minutes at a stretch. He may be, and I think 
usually is, alone ^ during these vocal gymnastics, and all 

^ When I say the child is usually alone when he is engaged in lin- 
guistic play, I do not mean that he is "talking to himself," as the governess 
reports. The volume and tone of his voice at such times indicates that 
he is, probably unconsciously, calling to some one at a distance. 
I have been much impressed with the call tones in all the young 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 2$ 

the evidence indicates that he is engaged in linguistic 
practice merely — fixing securely a motor series of a special 
kind. When he acquires facility in the execution of a given 
word or expression, he gradually abandons drill on it, and 
applies himself to new tasks. This principle seems to 
apply, though to a continually lessening degree as develop- 
ment proceeds, to every stage of linguistic development. 
The individual seems always to rehearse new words and 
expressions which he will have occasion to use in daily Hfe, 
even in later years when he takes up a new language. 
This practice seems to be more or less mechanical in the 
early years; it is as though, when the child hears strange 
words (though not too strange or too far removed from his 
present linguistic achievements), there is a tension in his 
vocal system until it gets adapted to the easy rendering of 
the new combination. Then the tension is released, and 
so the practising activity gradually ceases. 
It will be granted, no doubt, that if the child did not 

child's linguistic activities, except when he is responding to some one who 
is directly before him and looking into his eyes. One may listen to a 
child babbling in a distant room, where he is alone, playing happily with 
his toys ; and his voice has continually that peculiar timbre or intonation 
or whatever it should be named that characterizes the tones of an adult 
when he is calling to some one at a distance. The child is not addressing 
his toys ; his talking is incidental, playful, without being the special object 
of attention ; and in a more or less reflex way it takes on the characteris- 
tics of the call. All early linguistic activity has something of the inter- 
jectional, or exclamatory, about it, as we shall see later; but the call 
tones are sui generis. 



26 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Thede- vocalize in this spontaneous and excessive way he would 
of voiunteiy never learn to use the conventional speech employed in 
spontaneous ^^^ environment.^ Sully speaks of this as a " rehearsal " ^ 
vocal activ- f^j- ^he use of language later on. Most students of mental 
development, as Groos, Hall, Baldwin, -and others, regard 
play, linguistic or otherwise, as a preparation, at least in 
part, for the serious enterprises of mature life. It is a 
principle of universal validity in mental evolution that as 
the individual proceeds his activities become shaped ever 
more largely by the needs of adaptation to the environing 
world. At the outset his actions are determined largely 
from within; and the process of development is in a 
measure one of selecting out of the original activities those 
which are most serviceable in adjustment; and this method 
of development holds in the acquisition of linguistic forms 
as in all else. In the beginning of vocal experience, 
as we have seen, the infant is quite indifferent to the par- 
ticular combinations employed about him; but by the 
close of his first year he shows that he is inclined to give 
some little attention to the simpler combinations he hears, 
and he strives in a crude way to reproduce them. 

In his first efforts at linguistic imitation the child copies 

* In his "Dynamic Factors in Education," Chap. IX, the author dis- 
cusses in some detail the general principle of the development of volun- 
tary out of spontaneous action. 

2 "Rehearsal" seems hardly the right term, since the child does not 
practise speech in just the way it will later be employed. Gymnasticizing 
would denote the process more accurately. 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 27 

general vocal activity only. That is, when people talk to 
him, he reacts in vocalizations, but not in any pattern of 
sounds that is spoken to him. He imitates the general 
activity of voice-making, but not special word-making. No 
matter what I say to K. at fourteen months, she responds 
at once with a wealth of babbling, but with no attempt 
to copy my words. We can conceive that the child hears, 
more or less appreciatively, varied sound elements in the 
speech of adults, but he does not hear them in any special 
sequential relation to one another. Vocal activity in the 
adult sets agoing vocal activity in the learner; but once the 
latter gets started he loses sight entirely of the particulari- 
ties in the speech of his model, and he runs on in his own 
way. 

K. at eleven months could use several words resembling The lin- 
in a way the conventional forms used by her parents, as, f^nityof 
for instance, hd (hat) ; bit, hit (bow wow), the words used *i|chnd 
by those about her for dog when speaking to her; td, td 
(tick tock), the sounds used to designate a watch or clock. 
She apparently acquired these words by imitation, sup- 
plemented by the reaction of the people about her upon her 
crude approximations. She had also a few words of her 
own coining which were attached spontaneously to ob- 
jects, and these her elders took up, and they became fixed 
in her vocabulary for a considerable period. A word 
resembling Ndohhin was employed for every sort of thing 
which she used for food. The word came originally 



28 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

from an accidental combination of sounds made while 
she was eating/ By the aid of the people about her 
in responding to this term and repeating it she " selected " 
it and for a time used it purposefully. She employed it at 
the outset for a specific article of food; then her elders 
extended it to other articles, and this aided her in making 
the extension herself. Once started in this process, she 
extended the term to many objects associated with her 
food, even objects as remote from her original experience 
as dining room, high chair, kitchen, and even apple and 
plum trees. She had seen fruit picked from these trees 
and put into people's mouths, and this would usually 
excite the use of the word. These instances are typical 
of much of the child's linguistic activity during the first 
two years at any rate ; and the principles involved are ap- 
plicable to a greater or less degree at every point through- 
out the entire period of language learning. 

In this connection it may be noted that the year-old child 
can use his limited stock of abortive words only when in 
immediate contact with the objects or actions which they 
denote. When K. sees her bottle, for instance, she can 
name it in her way. At other times, however, she may be 
hungry, but she can reveal her need only by means of her 
original cry. She either cannot image her bottle; or if 

^ Allaire {op. cit.) reports a sound, nga, nga, made early by his children 
in connection with tasting, but I am not familiar with any other instances 
of a similar character. 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 29 

she can, the image cannot revive the special vocal com- 
plex which the object itself readily reinstates. I do not 
forget that there is a principle of wider applicability in- 
volved here. All of the young child's voluntary activities 
are determined very largely, if not entirely, by the stimuli 
directly impinging upon him. Absent objects or situations 
do not exert much if any influence upon his behavior, 
probably because the power of imagery is but very slightly 
developed, evidence of which is found in all the child's 
reactions.^ 
It should be noted that the child's first imitations are con- The visual 

factor in 

cerned primarily with the motor processes, of the lips prin- the child's 
cipally, required to make words, or to perform actions with gSstic^^imi- 
reference to objects. This gives him his consonantal *^**°^^- 
elements which become joined to one or another of the 
elements in the vowel range which he can execute. It is 
so with bit for " bow wow " ; tdioi" tick tock," and so on. 
H.'s first word for gas, lamp, gas fixture, candle, match — 
any lightable thing so far as she knew it, was a combi- 
nation made by an a sound joined with expulsion of breath 
required in blowing out a light. The child seizes upon some 
characteristic activity which he can see performed in reac- 
tion upon any familiar thing, and this when he repeats it 
means this thing to him; and in time he may extend it to 
various objects more or less closely connected with the 

* Certain phases of the principle in question are considered in the 
author's "Education as Adjustment," Chap. X. 



30 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

original object. If the people around him respond appro- 
priately, he tends to settle upon this symbol and convention- 
alize it for his own use for a time. Sometimes these home- 
made symbols are retained for a long period, regardless 
of the terms used by his elders. They are retained until 
the child discovers in some manner that other terms would 
be more serviceable, or until the parent or teacher restrains 
him from employing them. The child is not at first keenly 
ear-minded when the eye will help him to the means of 
designating an object or repeating a word. When you 
speak to him in strange terms, he always attends closely 
to the movements of your vocal apparatus: he looks at 
you as attentively as he listens to what you say. As he 
goes on in linguistic development, however, the ear-minded 
attitude becomes gradually supreme because of the neces- 
sity of his reproducing subtle verbal combinations when 
the eye is unable to detect very easily how they are executed. 

2. Linguistic Invention 

The dis- The invention of new verbal combinations for the pur- 

tweenpiay pose of communication, which Krauss, Hale, Chrisman. 
and others think is characteristic of all children in the 
course of their linguistic development, is a quite different 
matter from linguistic play. The latter, like all play, is 
an end in itself; or it is one form of competitive activity. 
But in the invention of a language, in the true sense, the 
child always has a definite use to which his linguistic terms 



and inven- 
tion. 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 31 

are to be put. Children gather into cliques, and then 
devise some novel passwords or keywords which are 
understood by their own set, but are as Greek to the bar- 
barian. H. has a few terms and phrases which she uses 
in communicating with her girl friends when her brothers 
are about, and she does not wish them to be let into the 
great enterprises which she has in contemplation. It is 
probable that some of the specimens of " secret languages '' 
mentioned by Chrisman ^ could not be satisfactorily ac- 
counted for in this way, but yet doubtless most of them had 
their origin in the need of devising some means of com- 
munication which would be exclusive. Of course, muti- 
lated words, such as occur in " baby talk," cannot be 
regarded as original or invented, since they are purely 
accidental variations arising from the effort of the child to 
reproduce a copy. He does the best he can, and believes 
he is hitting the mark. Baldwin,^ it is true, makes this 
variation in imitation the basis of invention ; but while in 
language it does result in the production of new forms, 
yet the individual is ordinarily unaware of his deviation 
from his copy, and as a general thing he does not use his 
invention with any consciousness of its originality, or with 
the purpose of employing it in a different way from that 



* See the Century Magazine, Vol. LVI, pp. 54-58 ; also Science, Vol. 
XXII, p. 303. 

' See his " Mental Development ; Social and Ethical Interpretations," 
Part II, Chaps. Ill and IV. 



32 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

in which the copy is used about him. Further, he aban- 
dons it as soon as he acquires the abihty to reproduce more 
exactly the conventional forms of the mother tongue. It is 
doubtless true that most children find pleasure in the pro- 
duction of variations upon some of their familiar words. 
Their purpose seems to be to test their ability to be original. 
The performance of an unusual act affords pleasure in 
linguistics as in other matters. H. learning the word 
desserty to illustrate, plays with it for a time and exhibits 
it in a dozen or more variations, — dissert, dishert, desot, 
des'sert, and so on.^ 

Chrisman's view that secret language is a " thing of child 
nature '^ seems to be true in only a very limited sense; 
children rarely work out a linguistic system de novo. I 
have not been able, either, to find the three distinct periods 
in language learning, which Chrisman mentions, the last 
of which, falling between the eighth and fifteenth year, is 
the ^' secret language " period. I have observed, however, 
that when the child begins the study of foreign languages, 
he constructs more or less accidentally, though in some cases 
deliberately, novel combinations made up of elements de- 
rived from the mother tongue and the strange tongues. 

^ In a later chapter I shall discuss the influence of analogy in lin- 
guistic invention — in the inflection of unfamiliar words on the basis of 
familiar ones, and more rarely in the making of words, practically de novo, 
in following out a principle of construction apparent in words that are 
known — booktionary, sorrified, magnicious, horsebacking, pianoing, 
•wind-ship, eye-curtain, lessoner, etc., are examples. 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 33 

The new linguistic activity stimulates in some degree the 
tendency toward linguistic play, the situation being not 
wholly unlike what it was when the child was a novice in his 
own tongue. 

3. Interpretation of Conventional Language 

It was suggested above that in the interpretation of The under- 
conventional language the child is greatly aided by the skill words^s 
he has inherited in making out the significance of vocal ^^^ ° ^' 
timbre and featural expression. The parent's first words 
to her child are expressions wholly of emotional states, 
and he gets his cue as to meaning from her intonations, her 
bodily attitudes, and the play of her features, and not at 
all from the words as mere symbols. But in the course 
of time, according to a process sketched elsewhere,^ the 
auditory factor alone — the word — comes to assume the 
suggestive function originally performed by intonation, 
etc., and to awaken the feehngs and reactions which were 
originally awakened in other ways, and in this manner it 
acquires meaning. 

But how does the child learn to interpret words that 
relate to objects and situations apart from the mother? 
The principle is illustrated in the following instance. The 
mother says to her child, '* baby up ? " and she assumes the 
attitude of jumping up herself; or, better still, she tosses 

* For a discussion of the process in question see the author's " Edu- 
cation as Adjustment," pp. 210-223. 

D 



34 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

the baby up, using the words at the same time. Soon, 
of course, the words become associated with these definite 
activities and suggest them when heard. It should 
be added that it is difficult to determine just when 
words as pure symbols, without any aid from intonation 
or gesture, are able to awaken definite and appropri- 
ate *' ideas " and reactions. It is, however, a matter of 
common observation that in speaking to a two-year-old 
child, say, regarding even quite familiar objects and 
actions, people generally make generous use of all the ex- 
pressive aids. 

The child's range of interpretation of conventional lan- 
guage will never exceed his range of vital, concrete ex- 
perience; and, as a matter of fact, it lags behind some 
distance. Mrs. Hall^ observed that her son at five months 
would turn toward the mirror at the sound of the word 
" baby," and would look toward the speaker at the sound 
of his name, " Albert." But it is not clear that he under- 
stood these terms as conventional symbols. It is possible 
that he would react in the same way upon other terms if they 
were used imder precisely the same circiunstances. No 
matter what K. may be doing at any moment, I could get 
her at six months of age to look at me by speaking almost 
any word if it were uttered as a call, or with interjectional 
tone. On the other hand, I could pronounce the word 
" Katherine " any number of times in regular discourse 
^ Child-Study Monthly, Vol. II, p. 587. 



different 
ages. 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 35 

with her mother or brothers and sister, where intonation 
was an unimportant factor, and K. would not notice it. 
The point is that normally a six-months-old child will 
hardly respond definitely to any conventional words used 
strictly as symbols. Every word reacted upon in a uniform 
way at this period must be richly supplemented with in- 
tonation, grimace, and gesture; and these latter factors 
are what will give it meaning to the child. 

Keeping in mind this principle, I have found that at The reper- 
toire of 
ten months the range of K.'s interpretation of conven- chUdren of 

tional language seemed to include the names of father, 
mother, nurse, brothers, and sister, '' baby," "doggie," 
" horsie," '' bottle," " baby down stairs," " dry clothes," 
"tick tock," "baby up," "comb hah," " pitty-pat," 
" give papa some." In the case of V. the range at this 
period did not go beyond the names of the members of 
the family, and possibly " dog " and " bottle." His lin- 
guistic development has been much slower than his broth- 
er's or sisters'. On the other hand, S. appeared to know 
what was meant by the terms " piano," " out doors," 
" don't cry," in addition to most of those understood by K. 
It should be repeated, though, that it is impossible to say 
with definiteness just when a symbol as such is understood, 
or just what understanding the child has of it. Certain 
it is, however, that his understanding becomes defined and 
amplified very gradually upon repetition of experience; 
and it is also certain that his understandings have to be 



36 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

constantly modified, and extended or cut down as his ex- 
periences increase. His first associations are apt to be 
exceedingly partial; and relatively unimportant and irrele- 
vant characteristics of objects which are often before the 
attention when the word is learned are seized upon and 
accepted as the meaning of the word in question. Miss 
Shinn^ says that her eleven- months-old niece *' securely " 
understood fifty-one names of people and things, and 
twenty-eight action words. Humphreys,^ too, says that 
when his child was eight months old " she knew hy name 
every one in the house, most of the objects in her room, 
and the parts of the body, especially of the face. She also 
understood simple sentences, such as " where is the fire ? " 
etc. Now, it seems improbable, to say the least, that so 
many words, as pure conventional symbols, could be cor- 
rectly interpreted. It is more likely that the cue to the 
meaning of most of the words was gained from gesture, 
tone of voice, and facial expression. Again, some of 
Trettien's correspondents^ say their children understood, 
as early as the eighteenth week, such expressions as 
" where's papa? " But the only word understood prob- 
ably is " papa." The child will " look about " just as 
readily for "papa" as for "where's papa?" Indeed, 
it is probable that a four-months-old child would " look 
around " in response to any word uttered with all the pre- 

^ op. cii,, p. 236. ^ See Trans. Am. Phil. Assn., 1880, p. 8. 

3 See his " Psychology of the Language Interest of Children," Fed. Sent., 
June, 1904, Vol. XI, pp. 1 13-177. Also Reprint, p. 16. 



EARLY REACTION UPON CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE 37 

cise expressive accompaniments attending the use of 
" papa.'^ At any rate, whatever may be true in respect 
to the term " papa," it seems certain that comprehension of 
'* Where's " as a distinct symbol is a matter of long, very 
long, experience in differentiation and specialization of asso- 
ciation; and the principle is universal in its application. 

The principles developed in this chapter respecting the Summary, 
child's early reaction upon conventional language may be 
stated in brief as follows : — 

1. Nature has endowed the child with a strong tendency 
toward spontaneous vocal activity, or voice play. This is 
revealed in his incessant babbling in the early months. 

2. This spontaneous vocal activity prepares the way for 
voluntary speech later on. In his voice play the child practises 
most of the sounds he will be called upon to make later on, 
but he does not execute them in the sequences presented in the 
conventional forms used in his environment. 

3. At first the child pays no heed to the particular verbal 
combinations employed about him; but by the close of the 
first year he shows that he is becoming attentive to linguistic 
forms. He makes an effort to reproduce the fundamental 
elements of the simplest words he hears that relate to the 
most concrete and vital of his experiences. He early discovers 
that advantages of various sorts flow from the use of conven- 
tional forms (though he does not know they are conventional), 
and this leads in due course to his imitating these forms pur- 
posefully. 

4. The year-old child can use only a few conventional 
words, — not more than twenty-five at the outside, probably, — 



38 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

and most of these are mutilated, so that only the parents or 
nurse can recognize them. The child of this age employs 
some words which he used first in a spontaneous way, and the 
people about him conventionalized them, and established them 
for the time being in his vocabulary. 

5. The child's first verbal imitations are concerned pri- 
marily with the motor processes, of the lips primarily, required 
to make words, or to perform actions with reference to objects. 

6. Linguistic invention should be distinguished from voice 
play. The latter is an end in itself, while in invention the 
child deliberately constructs novel combinations for the purpose 
of communication, when the conventional language will not 
meet his need. 

7. Children seem always to find pleasure in playing with 
words to see in how many ways they can execute them; but 
this is hardly linguistic invention. 

8. It is probable that children but rarely invent a system 
of linguistic symbols. 

9. The mother's first words to her child are expressions 
wholly of emotional states, and he gets his cue as to meaning 
from her intonation and the like, and not at all from the mere 
words as symbols. But as a result of association and abridg- 
ment, the word comes in time to have the power of reinstating 
the feelings and reactions which were originally aroused in 
other ways. According to the same fundamental process the 
child gains an understanding of words that denote objects 
and situations in general. 

10. The year-old child understands but few words as sym- 
bols, and these always relate to concrete objects with which he 
has had vital experience. These words are probably never 
understood in their full and precise meaning at the outset. 



CHAPTER III 

PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT 

I. Sentence-words 

A NUMBER of students of infant linguistics, as Holden/ Methods of 
Humphreys,^ Tracy, ^ et al,, have endeavored to determine the child's 
the relative frequency of the several parts of speech in the ^°*^* ^^* 
child's language during successive periods in his early 
linguistic development. They have made lists of all 
the words spoken by a number of children between the 
ages of fifteen months and three years approximately, 
classifying them according to the standard grammatical 
categories. Following this method of treatment, Tracy 
has calculated that of five thousand four hundred words 
employed by twelve children from nineteen to thirty 
months of age, and reported by several investigators, 
60 per cent are nouns, 20 per cent are verbs, 9 per cent are 
adjectives, 5 per cent are adverbs, 2 per cent are prepo- 
sitions, 1.7 per cent are interjections, and 0.3 per cent 
are conjunctions. 

^ On the " Vocabularies of Children of Two Years of Age," Trans. 
Am. Phil. Assn., 1877, p. 58 et seq. 

2 "A Contribution to Infantile Linguistics," Trans. Am. Phil. Assn.y 
1880, p. 5 e^ seq. 

3 "Psychology of Childhood," Chap. V. 

39 



40 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Now, it will be apparent upon a little reflection that this 
method of treating the child's vocabulary is external and 
formal. The classification is based upon the structure of 
words regarded ah extra, rather than upon their function in 
expression. Tracy, and all who use his method, take a 
logical or grammatical, not a psychological, point of view. 
To illustrate the principle in question, when K., at eleven 
months, says ha (hat), she always sees the object and 
thrusts her arms toward it, indicating plainly enough that 
she wishes to reach it. The word is uttered in an impulsive, 
or perhaps interjectional way; and all her expressions show 
that she has active desires with reference to the thing desig- 
nated. She is not simply naming it in a static, or purely 
denotative manner. Looked at from this standpoint, the 
word is seen to be more than a mere noun in grammatical 
usage; it does duty for an entire sentence in a highly 
generalized form.^ It is the " undifferentiated linguistic 
protoplasm " out of which in due course various sentential 
organs and members will make their appearance, according 
to some such general method of differentiation, possibly, 
as a complex animal organism, as the chick, for instance, 

* See, among others, Sully, "Studies in Childhood," p. 171; Lukens, 
"Preliminary Report on the Learning of Language," Fed. Sem., Vol. Ill, 
pp. 453-455 ; Dewey, " The Psychology of Infant Language," Psych. 
Rev., Vol. I, pp. 63-66; Egger, Observations et reflexions sur le develop- 
ment de V intelligence et du language chez les enfants, Paris, 1877; H. 
Ament, Die Entwickelung von Sprechen und Denken beim Kinde (Leip- 
zig, 1899), p. 163; Meumann, Die Entstehung derersten Wortbedeutungen 
beim Kinde (Leipzig, 1902), p. 31. 



41 

evolves from the undifferentiated germ-cell contained in 
the egg. So far as one can tell, K. employs her word 
hd (and this is typical of all the words she uses at eleven 
months), to convey such a notion, as, "I want that hat " ; 
or '' take me to the hat " ; or " I want to put that hat on." 
It is probable that her attitude is not expressed by " see 
that hat " merely, for she is exceedingly dynamic with 
reference to it. She is not content to look at it simply, 
or to induce me to look at it; she desires to do some- 
thing with it, and her modes of expression are cal- 
culated to affect me so that I will aid her in attaining her 
ends. It seems, again, that she does not have the atti- 
tude indicated by ''May I have the hat? " or "I wish I 
could have the hat," for she does not yet recognize clearly 
any power or authority to which she must thus appeal in 
realizing her desires. She is not pleading; she is demand- 
ing or commanding. But the special point to be im- 
pressed is that her word hd denotes more than a mere sub- 
stantive relation with the object; it denotes, in a general 
way, of course, all that can be indicated, though in a more 
particular and definite manner, by the grammatical ele- 
ments which in adult analytic speech we designate as 
noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, and preposition. 



Sometimes the adult reverts to the infantile method of Sentence 

words in 
adult and 
primitive 



linguistic expression, and makes single words do for sen- adult and 



tences. For instance, he says " hat ? " to the waiter in the speech, 
restaurant, at the same time looking up at the object which 



42 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

hangs where he cannot get it, and intoning in a special 
manner. This single word, used in this peculiar situation, 
and supplemented by gesture and characteristic vocal 
modulation, discharges the function of an entire sentence. 
The psychology of the matter is clear enough; the waiter 
has learned from previous experience that such a tone of 
voice and such a pose always denote a need, and the 
one word particularizes the need. The notions expressed 
in conventional language by " I want my " may be indi- 
cated plainly by appropriate motor attitudes; indeed, 
these attitudes can in such a case express the whole 
thought without the use of any word. If the situations we 
encountered in life were never more complex than in this 
instance, it is probable that man would not have invented 
parts of speech. Primitive races, as Romanes,^ Whitney,^ 
Sayce,^ Mtiller,* Powell,^ Brinton,® Bosanquet,^ and other 
students of primitive languages have pointed out, get 
along with single-word sentences. It seems to be well 
established that linguistic evolution on the phylogenetic 
side has proceeded by continual differentiation of primi- 

^ "Mental Evolution in Man," p. 294. 

^ See the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, Vol. XVIII, pp. 766- 
722, article on "Philology." 

^ Ihid., Vol. XI, pp. 37-43, article on "Grammar." 

* See his " Science of Thought." 

^ See, among others of his writings, his essay on the " Evolution of 
Language," Trans, of the Anthr. Soc. of Washington, 1880, pp. 35-54. 

' "Essays of an Americanist," p. 403 et seq. 

' "Essentials of Logic," pp. 82-86. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN CHILD'S LANGUAGE 43 

tive sentence words, this differentiation resulting in com- 
plex languages in parts of speech, and in their varied in- 
flected forms/ So the infant's expression, on the verbal 
side, is a highly undifferentiated one; and the process of 
development consists, for one thing, in continuous differen- 
tiation. This method of development — continual differ- 
entiation with specialization of function — has universal 
validity in mental ontogeny, holding as well for linguistic 
as for other activities. 

It is apparent why, classifying the child's vocabulary Gram- 
ab extra, we find that three-fifths of his words are nouns, function 
the names of things, as Mrs. Moore,^ Mrs. Hall,^ Kirkpat- Jy gesture, 
rick,^ and others maintain. We tend to overlook the pro- ®**^* 
nominal, verbal, adjectival, adverbial, prepositional, and 
conjunctional function of the first words; as I have in- 
timated, we unconsciously infer this function from the 
child's attitudes, gestures, facial expressions, intonation, 
and so on, and we disregard the part the interpreter plays 

^ LeFevre (see his "Race and Language," p. 42) has attempted to show 
that in phylogenesis all the grammatical categories have developed from 
the primitive cry. The cry of animals, even, contains the roots of human 
speech. There is the cry of need which gives rise in time to our inter- 
jection, and later to the elements of the sentence. The warning or sum- 
moning cry in turn gives rise to our demonstrative roots, and is the origin 
of the names of numbers, sex, and distance. 

2 "The Mental Development of a Child," Psych. Rev., 1896 (Mono- 
graph, Supplement No. 3). 

3 "First Five Hundred Days of a Child's Life," Child Study Monthly, 
Vol. II, p. 607 (March, 1897). 

^ "Fundamentals of Child Study," p. 236. 



44 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

in reacting upon infant speech. But viewed from the 
standpoint of the child's use of his words in his adjust- 
ments, it is evident that they are never at the outset merely 
nominal in function/ 

Mrs. Hall thinks objects are at first apprehended as 
wholes, without regard to their qualities or their action, 
but this seems extremely doubtful. It appears rather that 
the qualities of any object, as food, for instance, which 
determine what use he can make of it, will be uppermost 
in the child's consciousness in his reactions upon it; and 
in naming it at any time he will really, so far as his own 
mental content is concerned, be designating these quali- 
ties of the thing and not the thing in itself, whatever this 
may be. To illustrate, S. at twelve months liked buttered 
zwieback, and whenever he saw any on the table he would 
call out hockj hock, though he did not care for the plain 
variety. Surely his reaction must have been incited by 
and had reference to the peculiar gustatory quality of this 
special article. Indeed, the child's mental states must 
usually, if not always, be concerned primarily with the 
sensory and kinaesthetic values of objects, which would 
occasion a predominant adjectival attitude toward them. 
As we shall see presently, in the course of development 
one's experience with anything will gradually become 
generalized into what we mean by the term ''object"; 

^ Compare with this statement Dewey's view, " Psychology of Infant 
Language," Psych. Rev., I, pp. 63-66. 



45 

and then when he refers to it he will have a feeling first for 
this generalized something which he may designate, and 
then go on to specify certain particular experiences he has 
had or should Hke to have with it.^ 

But the young child's attitude toward things must al- The child's 
ways be determined in view of qualitative, rather than toward 
merely nominative attributes ; and at the outset the actional ^^^^^ ^ 
condition of a thing is regarded as but one of its attributes. 
When H. at nine months sees the kitten running after the 
ball, or her father taking gymnastic exercise, to illustrate, 
she indicates plainly that her interest is in the action of the 
thing she notices. At this early age she does not, of course, 
abstract the action from the object and regard it as a thing 
apart; but she is affected differently by the object when it 
is at rest from what she is when it is in motion. Her feeling 
for action as an individual something develops gradually as 
a generalization of a large number of experiences, wherein 
particular objects are seen executing a variety of activities. 
This results in establishing the conception, or the feehng, 
that there is in an object something over and above that 
which is displayed in any of its activities. In this general 
manner object, action, and quahty are differentiated, at 
least in feeling; and our analytic language aids the child 

^ I do not mean that we can form a notion of a thing apart from any 
of its qualities, states, or actions, but nevertheless with repeated expe- 
rience with an object we seem to gain a sense of its existence independent 
of any particular quality, state, or action. Doubtless this sense is in some 
part verbal, but it is more than verbal. 



46 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

in making the differentiation. The effort to employ differ- 
entiated speech imitatively assists in the definition of ele- 
ments in the child's original undifferentiated ideas. 

2. Nominal and Verbal Function 

Substantive It is probable, as already intimated, that the child's early 

and predi- . . , . , . , . . -, , 

cate func- mterests centre entirely m thmgs as qualitative and dy- 
feren^^ted namic; and, confining our attention here to the develop- 
at first. ment of nominal and verbal function, we have seen that it is 

only through the gradual establishment of certain feelings 
of uniformity in a vast body of varied experiences that the 
individual comes to feel any object as distinct from its 
qualitative and dynamic aspects. So that in the young 
child's consciousness noun and verb, viewing the matter 
functionally, cannot exist independently; the use of sub- 
stantive terms, speaking grammatically, always implies 
predicative characteristics. When the child makes his 
own terms, they always denote objects acting; just as do 
individual terms in primitive languages. Only in our own 
analytic adult language, which has been slowly developed 
to express intricate and highly differentiated intellectual 
content, are substantive and predicate function more or 
less completely differentiated. Now, when the child me- 
chanically imitates the forms of this highly differentiated 
language, some persons say that he must have back of 
them the same differentiated thought that the adult has, 
but in this assumption they certainly go wide of the mark. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN CHILD'S LANGUAGE 47 

In illustration of this point, take a case like the follow 
ing: I give K. the term ^' runs " for her brother cutting 
q,cross the lawn. I repeat it on several occasions, and I 
find that soon she' will point to the brother running, and 
exclaim, unsi What is the mental content back of such 
an expression? Manifestly her consciousness is engaged 
with this object in certain continually changing attitudes; 
but, as intimated above, as her experiences with her brother 
and other objects running increases, she will tend to feel the 
significance of the activity of running apart from any con- 
crete or particular embodiment. But these same objects 
present themselves from time to time under other and 
different conditions, each of which will, in due course, 
come to have a degree of individual reaHty. Then, in order 
to express any particular characteristic of an object, the 
child gradually comes to feel that he must first designate 
the objects without reference to any special attribute; and 
then he must have some means of designating the precise 
condition or attribute which is now in consciousness. If 
these objects always appeared in the same role, if he was 
always affected in the same way by them, the child would 
not need to have one term for substantive and another for 
predicate in describing his experience with them; a single 
term would serve adequately as noun and as verb, and 
also, it may be added, as modifiers. 

It has been said by several observers that, viewed ab 
extra J the child's nearest approach to the use of the noun 



4^ LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

The func- pure and simple is found in those expressions which, from 

tion of the 

exciama- one point of view, may be regarded as exclamations or inter- 
jections. To illustrate, S. hears a barking dog at a dis- 
tance, and he exclaims bu I bu I (dog) . He makes no effort 
to get the object, or to get away from it. His eyes, his in- 
tonations, his bodily attitudes, all show surprise and won- 
der, however, but with no tendency to definite action. Now, 
in this expression is he simply naming an object — either 
the dog, or the barking as an independent auditory thing ? 
The strict nominal attitude is a static one, and while in this 
case reaction is held in check for the time being, neverthe- 
less the individual is in a dynamic attitude toward the 
object. He is on the qui vive to detect what should be 
done in reference to it. If one should attempt to express 
the child's attitude in a sentence, it would probably be 
something like this: "That's the dog; should I run to 
mother? " " What's that noise ? Should I call some one 
to protect me ? " The point is that the child's exclamation 
is the expression of much more than a simple nominal 
attitude toward an object. It should be added that, as 
development proceeds, the individual normally falls into a 
more and more static relation toward many famiHar ob- 
jects, and so in his linguistic reaction he may reach the 
point where he can simply designate them; that is, he can 
employ the substantive in its grammatical function strictly. 
Again, a child early finds pleasure in the ability to recog- 
nize and name objects, as Groos has pointed out, and he 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN CHILD'S LANGUAGE 49 

always wishes to have others share his achievements with 
him; so he may, and probably does, often employ his words 
for the purpose of winning applause, rather than imparting 
an idea by predicating anything about an object. That is, 
he uses his terms in a simple, denotative way, without 
attempting to express his experience with the objects 
denoted. 

Before the completion of the second year, usually, and imitation of 
in some cases as early as the eighteenth month, the child ated speech 
begins to express himself in elliptical sentences, as, giving Jfferentia- 
two of H.'s expressions, " doggie-high '' (the dog is jump- Jj^o^g^t 
ing over a high fence) ; " Nann-come " (I want Anna to 
come and help me). Now, are the expressions, of which 
these are typical, an indication of that complexity of mental 
process which we are making the basis of true differentia- 
tion in speech? Viewed from without, they appear to be; 
but in reality they seem often to be mere mechanical imi- 
tations, with no subjective differentiation to correspond 
to the external, differentiated form. I have often said 
"doggie-high" to H., and she may be, and probably at the 
outset is, just copying my words. In her own conscious- 
ness there may be but little more differentiation with re- 
spect to this particular situation than when she employed 
the single word " doggie " in reaction thereupon. Chil- 
dren from a year and a half on for a number of months 
constantly illustrate this principle in their speech. They 
learn, as an auditory and vocal unity, an expression like 



50 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

" birdies fly/^ and they use it not only when they see a bird 
flying, but also when it is sitting on a limb or picking worms 
from the ground. That is to say, the term ^;y, when first 
used, may not denote a clear and definite particularization 
in mental function; and it will not carry true verbal func- 
tion until the child employs it for the purpose of describing 
a particular aspect or attitude of birds and other objects, 
and which he can and does distinguish from other attitudes 
or aspects. 

The principle is that such an expression as " birdie fly " 
in the child's speech may be regarded as a single term ca- 
pable of describing a bird in a variety of attitudes. The 
child is not aware that he is using a substantive and a 
predicate; he imitates as a unity,^ an expression which in 
adult speech denotes differentiation in feeling at least of 
object from action. The only way we can tell for sure 
when substantive and predicate have become differentiated 
in the child's speech is when he uses them appropriately 
in situations where he could not have imitated them just 
as he employs them; as when, dropping some bits of paper 

^ Preyer observed his son Axel at twenty-seven months saying mage- 
nicht {mag es nicht) and tannenicht {kann es nicht). Any observer may 
notice the same phenomenon, and often quite late in linguistic develop- 
ment, after the child has been in school for several years. 

Professor Bagley, in a private note, says : " My own girl at the age of 
thirty months used the term * Tanobijeu' whenever she wished her younger 
brother to get out of her way. After studying over the matter, we finally 
discovered that she had caught up and shortened a phrase that some 
older children had used — 'Tend to your own business.' " 



sentence 
construc- 
tion. 



51 

over the hot-air register, he sees them sail upwards and 
exclaims, " paper fly." Here action is apprehended apart 
from the special thing with which it was originally con- 
nected, and a beginning is made in regarding it as a char- 
acteristic that may be possessed by many different things. 
In due course ''flying" or "to fly" will denote a certain 
thing felt as having reality apart from objects as such. The 
same may be said of " running," " jumping," " shouting," 
and so on ad libitum. 
The prominence which some grammarians ascribe to the Omission of 

,.,... . . . . the copula 

verb m Imguistic expression may warrant its receiving a in early 
little special attention at this point. Before the twenty- 
fourth month, as a rule, the child uses sentences of two or 
three words, but the verb is quite often omitted, and from 
my observations I should say that the novice can get along 
very handily without it. To illustrate : K. at twenty-five 
months will say, ''Mamma — milk" (Mamma, I want 
my milk; or. Mamma, have my milk brought in). Taking 
my glasses in her hand, she will say, " Baby — nose " 
(I want to put them on my nose). Watching her nurse 
prepare her bath, she will repeat many times, " Baby — 
bath." One may count instances of this kind literally by 
the hundred every day in the life of an active child, from 
his second to his third or fourth birthday. The copula is 
quite generally omitted in the beginning. A three-year- 
old will say, "My — (or me or perhaps /) hammering;" 
(I am hammering); "Me — running;" "Me — playing 



52 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

horse," and so on ad libitum. So he will ask, " Where — 
papa going? " " Where — papa been? " " Where — 
my book?" *'My dog — running?" and so on. Helen 
Keller says in her autobiography that when she was seven 
she used such expressions as these: ''Eyes — shut; 
sleep — no" (''Their eyes are shut" — speaking of pup- 
pies — " but they are not asleep "), " Strawberries — very 
good," and so on. 

It is not difficult to understand why the child should 
thus do violence to the sentence forms of our speech. He 
can convey his limited range of thought adequately with- 
out the copula; being an adept at gesture and intonation, 
he can make these latter discharge the office of the former. 
His expressions always relate to very definite, concrete 
experiences, within the range of vision of himself and his 
auditors, so that he can make himself understood even 
with an imperfect handling of our linguistic tools. But 
when he comes to treat of more remote and abstract situa- 
tions, where most details of the idea to be conveyed must 
be suggested by symbols instead of by gesture, then he 
will feel the need of having command of a larger stock of 
linguistic aids, and of employing them in a precise conven- 
tional manner, else he cannot make himself intelligible. 

So far as actual need is concerned, the child could 
doubtless go on for a long distance, say up to the sixth or 
seventh year, ordinarily, neglecting the verb, and particu- 
larly the copula in his sentences; but with the logical forms 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN CHILD'S LANGUAGE 53 

of the adult constantly ringing in his ears he comes to adopt 
them as a matter of convention at the outset, and not be- 
cause he feels they are of special service to him. The 
parent and governess and teacher are incessantly putting 
the standard forms before the novice and forcing them upon 
his attention, and as a consequence he abandons his own 
original, abbreviated, gesture-symbol forms, and takes up 
with the conventional models. Just observe a child say- 
ing, for instance, '' Doggie — high " (the dog jumps, or 
is jumping, over a high fence), and notice the parent re- 
peating after him, " Doggie jumps high," and asking the 
child to follow him. This is going on incessantly in the 
first years of language learning; if the parent is not dictat- 
ing conventional forms, then the brothers and sisters and 
playmates are. The conventional forms are flying about 
the child all the time, even though the speakers are un- 
conscious of his presence, and it is inevitable that he should 
in time come to imitate these forms in a more or less me- 
chanical way. So he is not let alone to do as he chooses 
linguistically; the social milieu resorts to various devices 
to get him to abandon his primitive linguistic forms before 
he feels the need of anything better. Not only are the 
standard usages constantly thrust upon him by all charged 
with his care and culture, but the people around him make 
generous use of ridicule to hasten his progress in adopt- 
ing the standard modes. Observe an eight-year-old boy 
making fun of his three-year-old brother for some of his 



54 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

childish phrases, and the importance of this force in urging 
the child to abandon his original expressions, though they 
serve him well enough, will be appreciated. 

3. Inter jectionaP function 

Thus far mention has been made only of nominal and 
verbal function in the child's earliest sentence-making. 
It might have been better to have begun with the inter- 
jection, since this, viewed from one standpoint, is the first 
part of speech to appear. It may be observed, however, 
thatMeiklejohn ^ and others say the interjection is no real 
part of the language, since it does not enter into the or- 
ganism of the sentence. But the students of infantile 
linguistics have retained the interjection as a part of speech ; 
and, according to Tracy's summary, the vocabulary of the 
average child of about two years contains less than 2 per 
cent of interjections. Salisbury^ maintains that in the vo- 
cabulary of his child at thirty-two months there were only 
five interjections out of a total of six hundred forty-two 
words. The table given by Kirkpatrick ^ shows about the 
same phenomena as Salisbury's. Now, these classifica- 

* I do not here distinguish between interjectional and exclamatory- 
function, though in strict grammatical treatment this should doubtless 
be done. Professor Owen makes this distinction; the interjection is a 
sentence element, though it is not strictly a part of the sentence. The 
exclamation may be expressionally self-sufficient. 

2 See his "English Language," Part I, p. 60. 

^ Educational Review^ Vol. VII, pp. 287-290. 

*See his "The Fundamentals of Child Study," p. 236. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN CHILD'S LANGUAGE 55 

tions are made strictly ah extra, according to the formal 
grammatical categories. But, regarding the matter psy- 
chologically, there is an inter] ectional element in most of 
the child's early words, as Mrs. Hall ^ appears to have ob- 
served, for she noticed that the language of her child from 
the two hundred thirty-third to the three hundred fourteenth 
day was an " inter] ectional onomatopoetic race language." 

The principle in question may be illustrated by citing The inter- 
B.'s use of kee (kitty). Whenever he uttered it, in the element in 
beginning, there was always something of the " Oh ! " Sin?s°^ *^^ 
quality about it. The kitten was for some weeks a fresh speech, 
surprise every time he beheld it, and he used his word 
with much feeling. He might with propriety have used 
" Oh ! " in place of kee. One who observes a child as he 
learns new ob]ects cannot escape the conviction that his 
expressions all have, for a time at least, an inter] ectional 
element. It is interesting to note in this connection that 
anthropologists, as Aston,^ e.g., maintain that human speech 
originated in certain natural cries, — hisses, shouts, grunts,^ 
— and these in time became interjections. Interjections 
were in the beginning, then, the only parts of speech; all 
others were included in them. Whether this position can 

^ Op. cit., p. 601. 

^ See the London Journ. Anthr. Inst., Vol. XXIII, pp. 332-362. 

' When gesture is relied upon largely in expression it is necessary to 
have some means of attracting attention, and then the rest can be done 
by hands, face, and body. Hence the prominence of grunts, cries, etc., 
in the speech of children and primitive people. 



56 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

be defended or not, it is at least evident that interjectional 
speech comes very easy to the young, and it is prominent 
up until the adolescent period. One may hear chidren 
(boys especially, I think) from five to twelve incessantly 
using expletives such as Gee Whiz I Giminy Crickets! 
and so on through a long list. They are all employed, it 
seems, in expression of strong feeling, or to emphasize an 
idea put forward first in conventional fashion; it is possible 
that the fondness of boys for the use of " strong " lan- 
guage in their conversation may be explained by this prin- 
ciple. The child's attitude is usually in some measure 
interjectional, even if he does not use the particular forms 
recognized by formal grammar. He can use "horse" 
with interjectional function about as readily and effec- 
tively as " Oh ! " or " Whew ! " or " Hurrah ! " In the 
course of development this exclamatory or interjectional 
coloring of the child's language gradually declines, after 
the age of seven or eight, say, so far as ordinary speech is 
concerned, though throughout the whole period of child- 
hood, and to a less extent during youth, interjectional func- 
tion is much in evidence. As intellection increases, inter- 
jectional activities decrease. Thus one result of develop- 
ment is gradually to confine interjectional function to the 
conventional terms.^ 

^ Professor Bagley suggests that the interjection is an instance of the 
undifferentiated sentence-word functioning after the sentence has be- 
come organized. 



CHAPTER IV 

PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 

{Concluded) 

I. Adjectival and Adverbial Ftinction 

Let us glance for a moment now at the place of qualify- Require- 
ing and particularizing terms in early linguistic activity. Se^cor-' 
The term " modifier " suggests differentiation in mental th?'''So°di- 
content, and we should not expect to find limiting terms ^®^-" 
and phrases employed, intelligently, at any rate, until the 
child's thought had attained a considerable degree of com- 
plexity, so that he would feel the need of some particulariza- 
tion in his expression. Of course, his appreciation of par- 
ticular properties of objects is impHcit in his reactions upon 
them — in his attitude toward his kitten, for instance — 
long before he employs qualifying terms. He shows that 
he regards his kitten as " nice," for illustration; but still 
the notion of niceness as a general attribute of things is not 
yet differentiated. Two processes must go on pari passu 
in order that the child may feel the need of terms to func- 
tion as modifiers. For one thing, there must take place 
continual differentiation in the mass of impressions which 
are received from any particular object; and then there 

57 



58 



LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



The de- 
velopment 
of particu- 
larizing 
function. 



must be generalization of similar experiences with objects, 
giving types of experience which may each be designated 
by modifiers, and attached to objects according to the type 
of experience which they yield. 

Of course, quahfying terms may very early be used 
which have the outward aspect of modifiers, but inwardly 
they do not function as such. They are the resultants of 
mere mechanical imitation. Take, for example, H. who 
at two and a half years would say, when running to greet 
her father returning to the house, ^^nice papa." She had 
been taught this formula, and it probably was the expres- 
sion of no different mental content from when she said 
" papa " simply. So she would ask for a '' nice story "; 
but what she wanted was a story, not some special kind of a 
story — a nice as distinguished from some other kind of a 
story that she had heard; she did not employ nice as a 
particularizing term. Again, I say in the presence of S. 
at nineteen months, " nice mamma," at the same time 
stroking her hair. He imitates my action and my words, 
but manifestly he uses both words as a single term. Doubt- 
less the stroking suggests to him some of the mother's 
special quahties denoted by nice, but even so, his concep- 
tion must be extremely dim and undefined. 

The principle is that at the outset the child views the 
kitten, to keep to our illustration, in a certain very con- 
crete, totalized way, without differentiating the notions of 
niceness, of gentleness, of playfulness, and so on. But 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 59 

as experiences with the kitten and other domestic animals 
(including human beings, possibly) increase, these ideas 
gradually gain a certain degree of individuality. The 
attribute denoted by nice^ for instance, is, of course, always 
experienced in connection with some definite thing; but 
as the number and variety of such things are augmented, 
the characteristic of affording pleasure of a special sort, 
to which is attached the conventional symbol nicCj being 
common to all, it acquires a kind of reality and importance 
of its own, although it is impossible to tell how far this goes 
in any special case. When this stage of particularization 
is reached, the child can begin to use the modifier in an 
intelligent manner. He can say, " I have a nice doggie," 
and the adjective will indicate that a particular character- 
istic of his dog has come to clear consciousness in his reac- 
tions. As evidence that he appreciates the quality as such, 
he can apply the term appropriately in reference to other 
objects, where he could not mechanically have imitated its 
use. Nice, then, has become a true particularizing term; 
and the principle is universal in its apphcation to the 
natural history of all modifiers appearing in the child's 
vocabulary. 

It is apparent that a term like the one in question is in- 
cessantly changing in respect alike to its precise content 
and to the range of its application. As development pro- 
ceeds, extensions are made in one direction, and excisions 
in another. Experience is constantly operating on the 



6o LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

term, and the transformations it undergoes depend upon 
the pecuHar character of the experiences. Here is a home 
in which the children hear the term applied frequently 
under a variety of circumstances; both physical and 
ethical situations are described by it. But here, again, is a 
home in which the term is used infrequently; the members 
of the family rarely assume the attitudes toward their en- 
vironments denoted by this term. The children from these 
two homes will have quite different " apperception masses " 
for the employment of this adjective; and the principle 
applies to the developmental history of all qualifying terms.^ 
The ad- It may sound commonplace to say that the adjectives 

jectives 

earliest which are earliest used relate to the impressive character- 

istics (depending upon the child's peculiar experience) 
of the objects with which he has direct, vital relations. 
Special qualities of different articles of food are among the 
very first to become differentiated and designated by sepa- 
rate terms,^ so that the adjectives appearing first in the 
vocabulary, in a mutilated form, of course, are such as 
" nice," '' sweet,'' '' bad," " hot," " good," " cold," and 
the like. Some of the terms descriptive of the child's 
experience with food, as " nice," '' good," etc., apply also 
to experiences in other situations, and it happens that these 

* I discuss this matter in detail in Chap. VI. 

2 It will be granted, of course, that long before the child uses conven- 
tional terms to denote the qualities of food, for example, he indicates his 
appreciation by gesture and facial expression, with characteristic inter- 
jectional expression of rich variety and complexity. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 6 1 

special terms become more prominent than any others. 
Large as well as noticeably small objects early catch the 
child's attention, and the adults in his environment intensify 
his natural tendency in this respect by putting stress upon 
large or tiny things in stories, and in all representations 
and descriptions of the child's surroundings. So " big," 
" great," " awful," and the like, early acquire prominence 
in his vocabulary, as do " little," " small," " tiny," and 
similar terms. So if one should go through with all the 
types of experience of the child at different stages of his 
evolution, he would find that intelligent adjectival function 
depends directly upon the degree to which particular attri- 
butes of objects become differentiated from their general 
characteristics because of the new relations which the 
individual, as an inevitable consequence of his develop- 
ment, comes gradually to assume toward them, and also 
because of the attributes which the social environment 
keeps urging upon his attention. 

Terms denoting abstract moral qualities in things ap- 
pear in the vocabulary last of all, even when such terms 
are imitated in a mechanical way.* It is quite impossible 
to tell what is the precise extent and content of an abstract 
term as the child employs it at different stages in its develop- 

^ All observers of child linguistics give instances in illustration of this 
principle; but see Chamberlain (Fed. Sem., Vol. XI, p. 278). His chUd, 
in her third year, used the word "sinecure" without the slightest idea of 
what it meant. See also Hall, "The Contents of Children's Minds on 
entering School." (Heath & Co., Boston.) 



62 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

mental history; but still the evidence all indicates that 
complex moral qualities are not appreciated until rela- 
tively late in development, so that the terms designating 
them are not intelhgently employed until the last stages of 
maturing. This is not to say that adjectives denoting 
moral qualities in adult speech are never early used with 
moral significance; indeed, such terms as " good," " bad," 
*' horrid," " ugly," " mean," " nice," " naughty," and the 
like, are apphed to persons as well as things as early as the 
third year. But they are always used in a very concrete, 
even physical way. The young child has had some un- 
happy physical experience with his playmate, and he calls 
him " bad," or " ugly," or " mean," or " horrid "; but as 
he develops he will normally come to use these terms 
to denote more and more general social and ethical 
attitudes of persons; to designate "qualities of heart," 
as well as, or perhaps rather than, more muscular 
traits. 

In her ninth year, H., who had been much read to, and 
who had herself at that time read quite a number of books 
of fairy tales, fables, myths, and nature stories, and even 
a few novels which her parents were reading — with this 
linguistic experience, she occasionally used in her conver- 
sation such a term as " excellent " or " genuine." She 
would say, speaking of a character in one of her books, 
he was an " amiable " or " genial " or " excellent " per- 
son. Now, when I would test her understanding of one 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 63 

of these terms, I would find usually that she had in mind 
some definite act described in one of her books, and she 
had remembered this term as applied to the particular 
character in question, and had seized upon it without 
any adequate notion of its true significance, which 
would be apparent when I would ask her to apply such 
a term to one of her playmates. At the age of ten she 
has only a very general and quite incomplete conception 
of the characteristics denoted by " honorable," say. It 
will require the experiences of many more years before 
she can react to or employ this term with a sense of its 
true and varied significance, as this has been determined 
by a long process of racial development. In the making 
of the term in phylogenesis, some such stages have been 
passed through, in growing from concrete and material 
to ever more general and ethical reference, as the child 
passes through in his acquiring the ability to employ it 
correctly and efficiently to connote ethical quality. 

What has been said of the development of adjectival The de- 
function applies practically without modification to the de- of adverbial 
velopment of adverbial function. The only word needing 
to be added here is that the adverb appears considerably 
later than the adjective, and even when learned it is used 
less frequently, as all children's vocabularies indicate. 
According to the observations of the writer, the term 
earliest used adverbially is one denoting place, — here 
in " here I am." There and where are used early also. 



function. 



64 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Mrs. Moore ^ thinks these antedate all parts of speech except 
interjections and nouns. But, unless under exceptional 
conditions, it is probable that with the possible exception of 
"here," "up," "down," "there," and "when," they 
appear later than the more concrete adjectives relating to 
quahty of food and prominent characteristics of dogs, 
playthings,^ etc. As we might expect, adverbial function 
at the outset is confined to the immediate, concrete, physi- 
cal experiences of the child, and relate to time and place 
principally. S., in his fifteenth month, being on the sec- 
ond floor of the house and in his father's arms, points to 
the stairs, at the same time urging his body in that direc- 
tion, and says, dow (down). So he will point to ob- 
jects and say da (there), uh (up), and he (here). 
"More," "out," "now," "where," "away," and 
possibly two or three other adverbs, are found in the 
vocabularies of children before the close of the second year, 
though they may not at the outset be used with precision, 
according to the traditional standards. 

2. Prepositional and Conjunctional Function 

The ab- From what has been said in previous sections, it must be 

connective apparent now that the part played by connective terms in 

ci^V^ ® adult speech is carried to a large extent by gesture in child 

speech. linguistics. Connective function is almost wholly lacking 

* Op. CU.y p. 129. 

' Cf. Hall, op. cit., pp. 604-606. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 65 

in the young child's expression, probably because his mental 
content is not sufficiently differentiated and complex to 
really require relational terms in its expression. At any 
rate, he can get on for some time very well without them. 
When a child of seventeen months says, **My — go — 
snow" (I want to go out in the snow), and a little later when 
he comes in exclaiming, "My — come — snow" (I am 
coming from the snow) — he is not focally aware of the 
difference between going to the snow and coming from 
it. In the mental content of the moment, snow occupies the 
all-important place; his attention is filled with his expe- 
rience in the snow. In the first instance, he longs to have 
these experiences repeated, and his sentence, *' My — go — 
snow," will reveal his desires completely and definitely 
to his caretaker. In the second instance, his ** My — 
come — snow " also meets the needs of definite expression ; 
here his impulses concern the imparting of his experiences 
to his caretaker, and these experiences do not include, 
prominently, at any rate, the relation expressed by the 
preposition as functioning in adult speech. The verbs 
" go " and " come," used in this special connection, 
discharge prepositional function, in a general way, at least, 
a principle exhibited in all primitive language, according 
to Miiller, Sayce, Powell, Romanes, and others ; and fur- 
ther, with the child's relatively undifferentiated experience, 
and with his facility in gesture, as suggested above, he 
may readily convey his notions without prepositional 



66 



LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



" upon," 



" " among," etc., come to 



The emer- 
gence of 
preposi- 
tional 
elements. 



terms.* Only very slowly do such terms as 
" through," " over," " beyond, 
occupy a place in the child's vocabulary. This is due, 
doubtless, to the fact that at first his thought is of things 
with their attributes, and not of the relations between them. 
However, as experience becomes ever more complex, rela- 
tions come to be ever more strongly felt; and as there 
develops an urgent need to express precisely experiences 
involving relations of the sort indicated, then these prepo- 
sitions begin to find their way into the child's speech. 
It may be added by way of qualification that the imitative 
tendencies of the child lead him often to use connective 
terms before he feels the need of them; but it is probable 
that such terms are not imitated as readily as those relating 
to the more concrete facts of experience. 

One cannot easily detect the emergence of prepositional 
elements in early speech. Their individuality is at first 
not at all marked or distinct. It is as though they were 
still a part of the organism in which they were originally 
imbedded. H., at nineteen months, says, as a typical ex- 
pression, " Papa — go — u — University," the u here being 
evidently a mutilated form of the preposition "to." At the 
outset it was lacking altogether; but by the twenty-sixth 
month it had become differentiated completely from the 



* Dearborn, in his "The Psychology of Reading," p. 84, says that 
connective words made the greatest demand upon perception in his 
experiments upon reading pauses. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 67 

verb. We catch it here in the nineteenth month in its 
embryonic form; and so far as I have observed, all prepo- 
sitions have a somewhat similar history, which seems to be 
much the same in principle in phylogenesis as in ontogene- 
sis. Powell,^ commenting on prepositional function in the 
Indian language, maintains that prepositions are often in- 
transitive verbs. When an Indian says, ''That hat table 
on," we are to consider the " on " as an intransitive verb 
which may be conjugated. " Prepositions may often be 
found as particles incorporated as verbs; and still further, 
verbs may contain within themselves prepositional mean- 
ings without ever being able to trace such meanings to any 
definite particles within the verb. . . . Prepositions may 
be prefixed, infixed, or sufiixed to nouns ; i.e. they may be 
particles incorporated in nouns." 

In some children's vocabularies " up " and " down " Gram- 
are given as about the first prepositions to appear, and they psychoiogi- 
are said to be used properly by the eighteenth month or so. t^n^n the 
The child says, " upstairs " (I want to go upstairs) and ^tLng^''^^'*" 
" downstairs." Now, one who will carefully observe the 
early use of these words, cannot fail to detect that they are 
not employed with exclusive prepositional meaning. In 
the beginning, the child says "up," and makes this expres- 
sion definite by extending his arms upward, by straining 
upward with his body, by looking upward, and by so em- 
ploying his voice as to leave no doubt respecting his de- 
^ Op. cit., p. 46. 



68 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

sires. His word really seems to denote the place he wishes 
to reach, and the method of reaching it, although neither 
of these elements is focal in attention, as we can imagine 
they might be in the case of an adult who sat down and 
reflected upon getting upstairs. The child's consciousness 
might be said to be motor as well as ideal when he is ex- 
pressing himself in this way. The word is just one phase 
of a complex ideal and motor attitude, and it is impossi- 
ble that it should be used with strict prepositional value. 
Before this word can be employed as a preposition merely, 
a number of other words will need to be used intelligently 
with it in the sentence, each to carry phases of the meaning 
which it now carries alone. 

In her twelfth month, K. would throw objects from her 
high-chair to the floor, and would exclaim, " down ! " 
This term seemed to denote mainly the racket made by the 
objects when they struck the floor. Prepositional relation 
was surely not a prominent element in the child's con- 
sciousness on such occasions. A little later she would take 
the object in her hand, and at the moment of releasing it 
she would exclaim, "down!" and blink, evidently antici- 
pating the noise to follow, which was the thing dominant 
in consciousness. Later on she would use the term when 
she wished to get out of her high- chair, but here also it 
had much more than prepositional meaning. Her con- 
sciousness could be expressed in adult language by the fol- 
lowing, perhaps: " Unfasten me, so that I can get down on 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 69 

the floor and play." It is improbable that the child uses 
such words as " up " or '' down " with strict prepositional 
meaning, or adverbial meaning either, before his third 
year, and I should prefer to make it a year later. In the 
fourth year one may hear expressions like the following: 
" I am going down the street," " I climbed up the stairs," 
etc., in which we doubtless have examples of genuine 
prepositional function. The original terms "up" and 
"down" have persisted, but much of their early meaning 
has been drawn off from them and loaded on to other terms 
in the sentence; and this, in principle, is the history of 
such prepositions as "on," "in," etc. 

It should be pointed out that there are prepositions which 
are not used except with prepositional meaning pure and 
simple. They describe relations which the child does not 
apprehend until he has made good headway in differen- 
tiating the parts of speech and constructing the sentence. 
Before such terms as " toward," " among," " against," "not- 
withstanding," and the like are employed, he has aban- 
doned his primordial sentence-words, and in their places 
he uses constructions with substantive, predicate, and modi- 
fiers, so that any one term now discharges special, dif- 
ferentiated function. When S., in his fourth year, says, 
"I threw it toward the house," he shows that he has 
reached the prepositional plane, so to speak, in linguistic 
development. It may be added that the principle here in 
question applies to development in respect to all the parts 



70 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of speech. To illustrate with our adjective nice, already 
often cited, this is first used as a sentence-word; but a 
term like virtuous is never employed until the sentence- 
word period is outgrown, and the word discharges adjec- 
tival function alone. 
Theap- It will not be necessary to elaborate on the statement 

peaxance of , . . , . . i m n i« • • i 

conjunc- that conjunctions appear late m the child s linguistic de- 
tion. " velopment. It is questionable whether the mental pro- 
cesses of a child of two, say, are integrated to the degree 
required for the purposeful use of the conjunction. 
Development results in the gradual integration of expe- 
rience, the establishment of more and more complicated 
relations among notions; and this makes necessary the use 
of conjunctions in expression. Probably the earliest sort 
of integration has reference to objects acting simultane- 
ously in the same way. In the beginning the child will 
say, " Baby — go — stairs" (Baby is going upstairs); 
^'Papa — go — stairs" (Papa is going upstairs). But 
early in the third year, one may hear such an expression as 
this: ''Baby and papa going upstairs." Objects acting 
simultaneously and congruently seem to be coordinated in 
the child's consciousness considerably earlier than are the 
acts they perform or the qualities predicated of them. 
One may hear children after the third year say, "My run 
and fall and get up again," and "Mamma is nice and 
good," and the like; but such expressions appear later 
than the first type mentioned. Baby and papa, going up- 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 71 

stairs together, are apprehended in a single act of attention, 
so they tend to stick together in representation, and in 
expression they require to be named together. But there 
is not quite the same necessity for coordination in succes- 
sive actions performed by the same object, though of 
course with development they tend constantly toward 
integration, and by the fourth year it is plain that fusion 
has been achieved. The child then joins with the conjunc- 
tion two or three of his own acts, as well as those of his 
parents, his brothers and sisters, his dog, and so on. And 
what has been said of the coordination of actions applies 
also, without modification, to the coordination of attributes. 

The first conjunction appearing in the child's speech is Conjunc- 
unquestionably and. As for the order of the appearance employed, 
of the other conjunctions, one cannot speak with certainty. 
Probably or is the second to be used with strict conjunc- 
tional meaning. The child says, " Baby have apple or 
peach? " This expression was forced upon H. early be- 
cause of her being required to choose between eatables, 
the parent saying, " Take this or that." The young child 
hears or used a great deal : '' Hurry or I will go; " '^ Look 
out or the baby will fall," and so on ad libitum. Of course, 
the mental functioning required for its intelligent employ- 
ment is quite a bit more complex than in the case of and; 
and it is apt to be employed as a result of mere imitation 
at the outset. It is undoubtedly true, as a general principle, 
that the appearance of any conjunction depends primarily 



72 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

upon the complexity of the thought which it is employed 
to express, though imitation is always a factor to be reck- 
oned with, leading as it does to the mechanical use early 
of a term much heard from the lips of parents and others. 
Because is such a term. Quite early one may hear the 
child saying, " 'cause I do," " 'cause I must," " 'cause I 
want to," and so on; and it is probable that his thought 
is not complex enough really to demand these expressions. 
I have endeavored to determine just when such words as 
"except," ''although," ''unless," "lest," "in order that," 
"nor," "whether," "or," and so on, appeared in the vo- 
cabularies of my children, but I find it is impossible to 
speak with certainty about the matter. Of this I am con- 
fident, however, that none of these terms is employed with 
precision before the fifth year. V., at six-and-a-half, does 
not use any of them correctly, so far as one can detect. 
But H., at nine, uses them all fluently. It is probable 
that these terms have forced themselves into her vocabu- 
lary largely because of their prominence in her reading. 
She has, of course, heard them in the speech of the people 
about her, and she has been reacting upon them for years; 
but so far as auditory language is concerned, relatively 
unimportant elements such as these are lost in the wholes 
of which they are members. However, they are likely 
to gain some measure of individuality when reading is 
begun, though they are likely to forfeit it again as the 
reader gains in facility in reacting to larger and larger 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 73 

language units. It may be added that a child of five 
seems to be able to express himself definitely and fully 
enough without resorting to any of these conjunctive aids 
that imply quite complex ideational integration. If he 
did not find these terms ready to hand, and if they were 
not continually impressed upon him, I think he would not 
miss them, at least not until he should be placed in situa- 
tions where he would be required to express involved 
thought very connectedly and precisely. 

3. Pronominal Function 

The absence from early speech of anything which could The late 
be called a pronoun has attracted the attention of all tiationof 
students of linguistics, and of psychologists and philoso- nounr" 
phers as well. Philosophical literature is full of specula- 
tion concerning the development of self-consciousness in a 
child, indicated by his use of the personal pronoun. The 
philosophers, many of them, have said that the child does 
not distinguish self from others, the ego from the alter, 
until the terms " I," " my,'' " mine," ** you," " yours," 
"he," " him," " his," begin to appear in his vocabulary, 
which most observers have found to be somewhere about 
the twenty-first month, though a few have not noticed 
it until the beginning of the third year. Ament detected 
it in the twenty-first month, Schultze in the nineteenth, 
and Mrs. Hall as early as the seventeenth. It is sugges- 
tive in this connection to note that primitive languages 



74 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

show great confusion in the use of the pronoun. Brinton * 
maintains that in aboriginal American languages there is 
no distinction between persons in the pronouns; "I," 
" thou," and " he " are not discriminated, a single sylla- 
ble serving for all persons, and also for both singular and 
plural numbers. In some primitive American languages, 
however, there is a great variety of pronouns, used to de- 
note not only person and number, but various conditions 
and aspects of the person or persons designated, as that 
they are standing, sitting, or lying, alone or with others, 
moving or stationary,^ and so on. According to Powell,^ 
"The Indian of to-day is more accustomed to say this 
person or thing, that person or thing, than he, she^ or it. 
Among the free personal pronouns the student may find 
an equivalent of the pronoun ' I,' another signifying * I 
and you,' perhaps another signifying * I and he,' and one 
signifying ' we,' more than two, including the speaker and 
those present, and another including the speaker and those 
absent. He will also find personal pronouns in the sec- 
ond and third person, perhaps with singular and dual 
forms." The pronouns are not in all cases completely 
differentiated in these languages, but are incorporated in 

^ See his "Essays of an Americanist" (Philadelphia, 1890), p. 396. 

^ Powell says that in Indian languages genders are not confined to sex, 
but are methods of classification primarily into animate and inanimate, 
which are again classified according to striking characteristics or attitudes 
or supposed constitution. 

* Op. ciL, p. 43. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 75 

the verb as prefixes or infixes or sufiixes, and as such they 
designate the person, number, and gender of both subject 
and object, and in the conjugation of the verb they play an 
important part. 

How is it now with the child ? Is pronominal function 
in his case discharged by the verb or some other part of 
speech ? If so, what need gives rise to the differentiation 
of special words to carry pronominal function? In dis- 
cussing these questions it should be said at the outset that 
from the beginning the child, in his reactions, distinguishes 
himself from others and from things. Of course, he does 
not make this discrimination reflectively; but neverthe- 
less he does not confuse himself with foreign objects when 
he is in need of food, say ; though, as President Hall ^ has 
shown, he may not recognize his fingers and toes as his 
own. But when he is hungry he does not give his food to 
another, thinking that the other may be himself. As early 
as the sixth month he exhibits in his reactions a certain 
realization of the opposition between ego and alter, for he 
will squall if another takes his bottle, or even if the mother 
shows overt partiality to another child. This apprecia- 
tion is very keen at a year and a half; though the child 
does not yet use terms that denote distinctions in persons. 

When a vigorous year-old child wishes to be taken in 
your arms, no one who sees and hears him can doubt that 

^ See his "Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self," Amer. Jour of 
Psych., April, 1898, Vol. IX, pp. 321-395. 



pantomime, 
etc. 



76 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Pronominal his discrimination between ego and alter is very clear. All 
first dis- that can be denoted by " I " is exhibited by the child, 
pantomime, though in a generalized, impulsive, non-reflective fashion. 
Again, when you see a child of this age scream and strike 
at his brother who appropriates his food or playthings, 
you cannot doubt that he possesses a rudimentary, un- 
differentiated sense of " mine." When, again, this same 
child offers his father a taste of his sugar plum, and 
exclaims, "Ndobbin? Ndobbin?" he is certainly 
acting out the question, "Will you have some sugar?" 
The you as contrasted with / is involved in the child's ac- 
tion, though he can utter not a syllable to denote the dis- 
tinction. Further, when the child's brother performs 
tricks for the babe, and the latter turns to the father or 
other person, and pointing at the brother laughs at him and 

gabbles about him, in a reaction of this sort the idea of 1 

i 
he, or possibly it, is apparent. There is a third person in I 

the case, who is not now in vital relations with the speaker 
and auditor. He is being talked about, not to. In this 
latter situation the child shows in his reaction — not^ 
reflectively — an appreciation of all three persons in their 
grammatical relations to him, so to speak. 

We have seen elsewhere that in the course of expressive 
development verbal symbols come gradually to take up the 
function which was originally discharged by gesture and 
pantomime; and the principle obtains in respect to pro- 
nominal as to other varieties of linguistic function. In the 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LlNCtTlSTIC ACtlVITY 77 

beginning, the child designates persons and things by ges- 
ture, and pronominal function in this stage might be said, 
perhaps, to be demonstrative. Even when he wishes atten- 
tion turned upon himself, he indicates it by characteristic 
bodily attitudes and contortions and vocal demonstrations, 
saying, in effect, *' This person requires your attention." 
But as development proceeds, concrete demonstrativeness 
in Hnguistic function declines, and pure symbolization in- 
creases; and in the matter of pronominal function, it re- 
sults that terms are gradually introduced which merely 
designate, leaving the matter of particular reference to be 
inferred from contextual relations. This is true, of course, 
of racial as of individual evolution; to the primitive mind 
all expression must be very objective and explicit; but 
with mental development, simple suggestiveness becomes 
ever more effective. In other words, language becomes 
ever more abstract, which means relieved of concrete, de- 
monstrative junction. 

In his evolution into pronominal function, the child From pan- 
passes first from the pantomime to the nominative stage, through 
He gives its name to everything to which he alludes, includ- native^" 
ing himself. If his elders address him as " baby," then he *^® P^°" . 

° yj nominative 

always uses this term when referring to himself in any way; stage, 
or, if his proper name is used, then he employs this on all 
occasions. So he says — a phenomenon observed by every 
student of the matter, I think — " Baby wants baby 
milk; " or " Baby hurt baby hand," and so on ad libitum. 



78 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

In the same way, he says, addressing his father, " Papa 
take baby." Similarly, when speaking of his brother, he 
will say, " Stanley putting on Stanley coat." V. con- 
tinued in this nominative stage until he was past his 
fifth year; then with great swiftness he went over into the 
pronominative stage. Within his linguistic range, he used 
pronouns with considerable freedom by the time he was 
six-and-a-half, though he still got the cases of his personal 
pronouns mixed at times, and he could not use the rela- 
tives correctly; his whats and his thats, for instance, gave 
him trouble. H., S., and K. were well into the pronomina- 
tive stage by the time they were three-and-a-half; and by 
six they had overcome all their difficulties in this respect. 
Why does the child pass through the nominative on 
his way to the pronominative stage in linguistic function ? 
For one thing, the name of a person is far more definite 
and uniform than his pro-name, and so all persons in speak- 
ing to the child use the former and avoid the latter, as 
Preyer * observed. To illustrate, a father addressing his 
child will say, *' Papa wants this or that; " or *' Papa will 
do this or that," and so on ad libitum. The mother, speak- 
ing of the father in the presence of the babe says, " Papa 
loves hahy ; " or " Papa has come home," and so on. 
Now, every one who mentions the father when the babe 
is concerned, uses this term invariably; and the same is 
true in principle of the baby himself, and the mother, and 

^ "The Development of the Intellect" (translated by Brown), p. 202. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 79 

brothers and sisters, and every object mentioned. If the 
pronoun were used, see the confusion (from the learner's 
standpoint) which would result. When I referred to 
myself I would designate myself by *' I " or " my " or 
*'me"; when the mother addressed me directly she 
would designate me by ''you" or ''yours"; when she 
spoke to the babe about me she would use " he " or 
" him " or " his." Here are eight symbols for the same 
object, looked at from the child's standpoint, and it would 
be a long story to tell how he must orient himself with ref- 
erence to each and all of these terms for the same individual. 
As you watch him moving forward in his integrating activ- 
ity, you see him adopting first one form and then other 
forms of the pronouns. At the outset he makes his one 
form do duty in all cases. " Him is a nice boy," " Me 
wants to go to him^s (or perhaps he^s) house," are illustra- 
tions. We shall go into this in greater detail in the chap- 
ter on Inflection; but it may be noticed here that the 
young child cannot readily accommodate himself to the 
notion of having different forms of his words apply to the 
same unchanging thing — unchanging so far as he can 
see. So parents, more or less intuitively, avoid the pro- 
nouns in speaking to young children, and this has the 
effect to retard the appearance in the vocabulary of pro- 
nominal forms. 

Then, the pronoun, as used in conversing with a child, 
lacks individuality, warmth, color. Try talking to your 



8o LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

year-old child in pronominative terms, and see how much 
weaker is your speech in personal suggestiveness. On the 
other hand, to continue the nominative stage too long is 
equally objectionable; it seems *' babyish." The opening 
mind needs to be assisted in its grasp of things by all pos- 
sible concrete aids; but once it has got a hold it knocks 
out the ladder by which it has ascended. This seems to be 
a principle of universal validity in mental development, 
and is one of the forces incessantly at work transforming 
the individual's interests and abilities, in linguistic as 
in other activities. 
The order This will be the best place, perhaps, in which to dance 

of develop- r j r r ? & 

ment in the at the forms of the pronouns which are used most frequently 

use of pro- 
nouns, at first. I said above that one form of the personal pro- 
noun is often made to do duty for all cases; but what is 
this form? Mrs. Hall's ^ boy used his first; Rzesintzek^ 
says that the possessive form mine is first used, while von 
PfieP thinks that the pronouns denoting second person 
are first mastered, then those denoting third person, and 
last of all come those denoting the first person. In Cham- 
berlain's* account of the linguistic development of his 
child, / and my appear very frequently after the be- 
ginning of the third year, but the other forms are not in 

^ Op. cit.y p. 606. 

2 Zur Frage der Psychischen Entwickelung der Kindersprache (Breslau, 
1899), p. 35. 

^ Wie lernt man eine Sprache ^ p. 5- 

* "Studies of a Child," Fed. Sent., VoL XI, pp. 264-291. 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 8l 

evidence. Preyer ^ observed that his son, Axel, in his 
thirty-second month, used 7, meaning by it " you." 
In the thirty- third month came such expressions as " das 
will ich! " " das mocht ichy However, before this, in the 
twenty-ninth month, the objective form of the third per- 
son was used, " gih mir,^^ and " bitte heb mich heraufJ^ 
The boy often used the third person, though, in designating 
himself, as when the father would ask, " Wo ist Axel ? " 
the latter would respond, " Da ist er wiederJ* 

These citations will perhaps suffice to indicate that there 
is no certain and invariable order followed by all children 
in the employment of the personal pronouns. In my own 
observations, my has been the first form to be adopted. 
In every case it came before 7. It was used in such rela- 
tions as the following: my want to do this or that; my 
feel bad; that is my pencil or apple, or what not; take 
my to bed or out of doors. The form mine came consider- 
ably later than my, and 7 still later. The situations in- 
volving the use of my appear to be more concrete than those 
involving 7, and it seems reasonable that it should first 
appear; and once it gets started it will serve for me^ mine, 
and 7 for a time. The use from the beginning of all forms 
of the pronouns, as given in some of the vocabularies, ap- 
pears to me very remarkable, and quite in contrast to the 
child's usual method of procedure in similar situations. 

Why does the child not settle upon one form perma- 

* Op. Cit.j p. 202. 



82 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

nently ? For the effective reason that his social environ- 
ment will not permit him so to do. His parents, once he 
gets to using pronouns at all, keep putting the conventional 
forms before him whenever he uses a form incorrectly; 
his brothers and sisters and playmates make fun of him 
for his lack of conformity to environmental standards, and 
the teacher tries to habituate him in the use of the standard 
forms, and gives him rules for his guidance. These are 
all-powerful corrective forces, and no child can long resist 
them, except in respect to the least important matters. 
Then simple imitation, where the child more or less un- 
consciously copies the models in his environment, is of 
immense importance in leading him to appropriate the 
various forms employed about him. It is suggestive to 
note in this connection that when an adult tries to write or 
speak a foreign language with which he is not very familiar, 
he experiences much trouble in mastering the cases of 
his pronouns; and of course this principle applies to 
other parts of speech than pronouns. 

Summary. Summarizing the principles concerning the parts of speech 

in early linguistic activity, we have the following : — 

1. There are two methods of classifying the words in the 
child's vocabulary at any stage of his linguistic development : 
(a) according to their grammatical form ; (b) according to their 
function in expressing his thought. 

2. Treating the young child's vocabulary according to the 
latter method, we find that his words are always at first sentence- 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 83 

words. The principal work of expression is done by gesture, 
pantomime, grimace, intonation, etc. 

3. In primitive language most words are sentence-words, 
made definite by gesture, etc. Occasionally one finds sentence- 
words in adult speech. 

4. The child is at first concerned primarily with the quality 
of objects as he has experienced them, and his expression relates 
mainly to these qualities. 

5. At the outset, substantive and predicate function are 
not differentiated. Even the exclamation, as employed by the 
child, carries substantive and predicate meaning. 

6. True substantive function appears gradually as a result 
of the development of the feeling that things exist apart from 
any of their particular manifestations or attributes. However, 
the child usually imitates the forms of differentiated speech 
before his mental content becomes sufficiently differentiated to 
necessitate their use. 

7. The young child, in his early sentence construction, 
universally omits the copula, its function being discharged by 
gesture, and left to inference by the auditor. 

8. Some observers have found but a very small proportion 
of interjections in children's vocabularies. They have, how- 
ever, viewed the matter ah extra, for most of the child's early 
speech is inter jectional in character, though not in outward form. 
With development, interjectional function is gradually con- 
fined to the special terms conventionalized for this purpose. 

9. The purposeful use of the modifier, with strict adjec- 
tival and adverbial function, implies considerable development 
of particularizing activity. At the outset, adjectival and ad- 
verbial function is discharged by grimace, intonation, etc. 

10. Adjectival function is developed through a process of 



84 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

generalization of experiences of one kind or another with objects, 
so that in time qualities are conceived to have a kind of reality 
apart from the objects. Nice, for instance, comes to denote a cer- 
tain sort of experience without reference to any particular thing. 

11. The adjectives first used are those descriptive of con- 
crete experiences with food, and other objects with which the 
child has vital relations in daily life. Adjectives relating to 
social, ethical, and moral qualities appear last of all. 

12. The development of adverbial function follows the same 
course in principle as the development of adjectival function. 

13. The young child does not use prepositions or conjunc- 
tions, probably because his mental content is not suflSciently 
integrated to require them. His thought is of things and their 
qualities, and not to any great degree of their relations as de- 
noted by prepositions and conjunctions. 

14. Prepositional function is at the outset discharged by ges- 
ture and by the verb, alike in child and in primitive speech. 

15. The early use of terms grammatically prepositional may 
not be functionally prepositional at all, as in the case of down, 
up, etc. 

16. Such terms as toward, among, against, etc., are never 
employed until the various parts of speech have become well 
differentiated from the original sentence-word, and they are 
used from the start with strict prepositional effect. 

17. Conjunctional function is differentiated later than 
prepositional function, probably because it depends upon more 
highly integrated mental content. 

18. The conjunctions first to appear are and and or. Ex- 
cept, although, unless, etc., appear relatively late, doubtless 
because the relations which they .symbi)Jto are slow in .being 
appreciated 



PARTS OF SPEECH IN EARLY LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY 85 

19. The pronoun does not appear until toward the beginning 
of the third year. Until this time, pronominal function is 
discharged by pantomime, etc. The child shows that he con- 
ceives all the notions denoted by the several pronouns some time 
before he employs them. 

20. The young child prefers to use the name of a person or 
thing rather than to employ a pronoun, doubtless because it 
is psychologically easier, and also because adults rarely use 
pronouns in speaking to him. 

21. There is no certain order in which all children use the 
pronoun^ but my or me usually appears before /. 



CHAPTER V 

INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 

I. The Function of Inflection 

The special- In the preceding chapter it was shown that, as the child's 

ization of 

sentence experience becomes more complex and differentiated, the 
sentence-word is gradually felt to be inadequate for the 
effective expression thereof; and the several functions 
which it discharges in an undifferentiated form begin in 
due course to assume an independent role, and are carried 
each by a specialized element or member of the linguistic 
organism, the sentence. The specialization of these 
elements is dependent mainly upon the differentiation of ex- 
perience ; but also partly upon imitation, both reflective and 
mechanical. The elements, having gained a certain de- 
gree of individual existence, react upon experience, making 
its differentiation more definite and permanent. When 
the child begins the use of the sentence proper, even though 
by mechanical imitation, he nevertheless comes into the 
inheritance of a plan according to which all his formulation 
of experience will thereafter occur. 
Now this process of specialization does not cease when 

86 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 87 

the parts of speech, as we have discussed them, have all Specializa- 
tion of the 
been evolved. In reahty, this is only the beginning of a parts of 

SXlccCu. 

long-continued process of differentiation. Several of the themselves 
parts of speech must themselves undergo specialization, tumsf ^ '^®^*'' 
according to one plan or another, in order to meet the need 
of portraying experience becoming constantly more com- 
plex and intricately involved. This is, however, less promi- 
nent in our own than in other, particularly ancient, lan- 
guages.^ There will occur to every reader the varieties of 
the forms of the Latin and Greek nouns, pronouns, verbs, 
and modifiers; though it is probable that pupils in the 
schools studying the classics and declining the nouns and 
pronouns and adjectives, and conjugating the verbs, do not 
appreciate the real significance of these forms, because they 
are not compelled to use them for the gaining and portray- 
ing of experience, so that they do not realize that each form 
is of service in the expression of a particular notion. Look 
at the noun, for instance ; it has its particular forms to 
show the sex of the thing denoted, and whether one or more 
are being considered. Further, the function of the thing 
in question, or what happens to it, or its relation to other 
things, — case relations, — must each be indicated by a 
special form of the noun. Thus a noun is in the nomina- 

^ Sweet, " A Practical Study of Languages," New York, 1900, Chap. 
VII, says that inflections take the place of prepositions, particles, and 
auxiliaries, in analytical languages. 



88 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

tive case, speaking generally, when the thing it denotes 
is the subject of the individual's thinking; grammatically, 
the " subject of a finite verb." A noun is in the accusative 
case, and its form must show where it belongs, when it 
denotes the thing which in the speaker's mind is the goal 
of the action of the subject; grammatically, the "direct 
object of a finite verb." A noun is in the genitive case 
when the thing it denotes is, in the speaker's mind, the 
source or origin or has possession of some quality or object 
to be denominated. A noun is in the ablative case when 
the thing it symbolizes bears such a relation to the subject 
of the individual's thought as is indicated by our EngHsh 
words "from," "by," "with." So we might run through with 
the other cases, and we would find that each is the result 
of a process of differentiation, whereby special conditions, 
relations, or properties of objects may each be accurately 
denoted by peculiar modifications of the symbols denoting 
them. The more primitive languages possess a single 
unmodifiable or uninflectable word, for man, say; and 
then the speaker using the word is compelled to particular- 
ize by means of gesture, intonation, grimace, pantomime, 
etc. Thus we see again that, in highly developed lan- 
guages, abstract symbols are made to discharge the func- 
tion which in primitive languages is borne by hands, face, 
voice, and body, as expressive agents. What is here said 
of the inflection of nouns applies in principle without 
qualification to all the parts of speech. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 89 

2. Inflection of the Noun and the Pronoun 

With this word of introduction we may turn without Three fac- 
tors oper- 
further delay to the development of inflection in the child's ating in 

the child's 

speech. Now this development may be influenced by three use of in- 
factors: (i) increasing differentiation of experience; forms. 
(2) imitation, reflective, or mechanical; and (3) habit. 
If the child were an accomplished linguist by birth, he 
would use an inflected form just when he needed it to ex- 
press some particular experience or relation with an object, 
but he would not use it before this; nor, on the other hand, 
would his use of it be delayed beyond this point. But as 
a matter of fact, he sometimes imitates inflected forms 
before he can use them intelligently; and at other times 
he has need for more precise and effective forms than he 
employs, but he has become habituated to the use of a cer- 
tain form, and he cannot readily free himself from it. It 
is probable that these three factors working together will 
account for most, if not all, of the individual's experiences 
in mastering inflected language. 
To begin with the noun, there are practically (from the inflection 

of the 

child's standpoint) but two cases in Enghsh; our use of noun, 
prepositions renders other cases needless. The possessive 
form of the noun is, according to my observation, never 
used as early as the nominative. The latter form serves 
all purposes at the start. S., at three, will say, " Papa has 
Papa glasses on; " " My found Mamma glove; " " My 
have Hawy knife," and so on ad libitum. It may be noticed 



90 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

that adults, in talking to children at this stage of develop- 
ment, often use the nominative for the possessive form be- 
cause it seems simpler. However, when the child becomes 
conscious of the possessive form, — which, as he grows 
older, is impressed upon him constantly by his elders, 
and which he tends to imitate as it occurs in the speech of 
his companions who have learned it, — when he gets the 
swing of it in his tongue, he makes rapid progress in em- 
ploying it properly on all occasions. 

The young child does not experience much difficulty 
with his plural forms (of nouns) when they are regular, 
but he easily goes astray on the irregular forms. Was there 
ever a child who did not say " gooses " when he first had 
occasion to use the plural form? And '' oxes," " mouses, '^ 
" tooths," '' mans," " sheeps," '' deers," '' leafs," " knifes," 
etc. ? H., coming down with the chicken-pox in her eighth 
year, exclaimed one morning, -*' I have fifteen chicken- 
poxes; " and three other children used the same form. 
When the child enters school, and begins to write lessons, 
spelling, and otherwise, the irregular plurals give him much 
trouble. In a child's spontaneous writing, even after 
several years in school, and done without special reference 
to spelling, but only to express his thoughts, — in this 
writing there will be found a strong tendency to make a 
principle of inflection cover all cases. When H. has got 
into the way of making the plurals of words ending in / 
by " changing the f tov and adding e^," she then comes to 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 9 1 

" chief," and she treats it as she has others of a similar 
make; and this is typical of many difl&culties she en- 
counters/ It is only after much experience in hearing and 
seeing the irregular forms, and especially in using them, 
that the child can resist the tendency to make them 
regular. 
Mention has been made ^ of the difficulties which the inflections 

- , . of the pro- 

novice encounters m mastermg the forms of his pronouns, noun. 

We is mastered only after many weeks of struggle ; and he, 

shej us, our, they, his, their, hers, theirs, them, who, its, 

whose, and whom, are, in the order given, increasingly 

more difficult of mastery. H., at ten, who is accurate and 

facile in the use of ordinary linguistic forms, cannot yet 

be depended upon to use who and whom correctly on all 

occasions. S., at four, sometimes treats his auditors to the 

following typical barbarism, " Us is all going out on the 

lake; " though when his announcement is greeted with 

shouts from the other members of the family, who may 

repeat his words with emphasis, he will usually correct 

himself linguistically without special aid from any source, 

showing that he has a feeling for the conventional form, 

but his original tendencies are still strong upon him. 

^ Egger, Observations et Reflexions sur le Development de V Intelligence 
et du Langue chez les Enjants, troisieme partie, has a good discussion of 
several points raised in this chapter. He dwells especially upon the 
influence of analogy in determining the child's speech. Most of the 
students of child language have cited instances illustrating the principle. 

2 In Chapter IV. 



92 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Slowly, very slowly, through the reaction of the people 
about him, reenforced by imitation, will he come to sub- 
stitute the conventional for the original form. 

It should be remarked that children of three or even older 
will often name each member in a group instead of em- 
ploying we; thus V. would say, "Mamma, Papa, S., H., 
and me all have candy; " or, " all go to ride," etc. (indi- 
cating by gesture who are included in " all"). Then the 
father will say, " Yes, we will all go," and V. catches the 
suggestion, though he may not reflect upon it. For this 
reason it must be often repeated, which is done incessantly 
by every one about V., and so it literally forces itself into 
his speech in the course of time. It is apparent why it 
should not be taken up readily, for its intelligent use re- 
quires relatively elaborate and difficult psychical processes. 
The child has been regarding individuals as isolated entities, 
each having a name; but now he is required to conceive 
of several individuals as a group to be designated, not by 
the name of each, but by the novel term " we " ; and the 
principle holds for they^ their, theirs, and them. Besides, 
the term " we " can be applied only to the group of which he 
is a part at the moment, and with each member of which 
he has vital relations which make the group a unit. It 
requires considerable experience to define these situations, 
even with the assistance of imitation; and the same may 
be said in respect to the several plural forms of the third 
person. A child will enumerate the names of a number 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 93 

of individuals who possess a thing in common, rather than 
to group them and employ the strange and to him devital- 
ized term " their " to denote that they as a body possess the 
thing or quality in question. From what I have observed, 
I should say that the forms of the third are mastered later 
than those of the first person, for the reason, probably, 
that the relations described by the latter are more vital, 
and so more impressive, and at the same time more easily 
grasped than those described by the former. It seems 
probable, too, that adults, in speaking to young children, 
use the forms of the first person much more frequently 
and effectively than they do those of the third person, 
and this would result in the child gaining control of the 
former more easily than the latter. This last point appears 
to be a matter of considerable importance, not only in 
reference to the learning of the forms of the pronouns, 
but it applies equally well to the learning of the inflected 
forms of all parts of speech. 

3. Inflection of the Verb 
The child's troubles in acquiring mastery of the con- special 

'It- 1' 1 1 difficulties 

ventional pronominal forms are slight when compared in master- 
ing verbal 
with those he encounters when he attacks the verb. His forms. 

feeling for regularity and uniformity, and his tendency 

to organize his experience inductively, and to deal with 

new experiences apperceptively or analogically, — these 

traits which serve him so well in most situations are often a 



94 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

handicap to him in handling his verbs; in witness of which 
note the following, gained from four children between the 
ages of three and five ; they are typical of a large number 
of instances that might be given: S. kills a fly and says, 
'^deaded him." " I speaked right out." " I letted him in." 
'' When you get H. all teached.'' " It will be stealed:' 
"I seed him." "I runned after him." "There is a 
man with a hatchet; what is he going to hatch? " " I 
drunked my milk." " I drinked my milk." " I eated 
my apple." " My failed down the step." " Budd swunged 
on the rings all the time." "Mamma buyed me a doUie; " 
and later " Grandpa boughted me a ring." " S., did you 
telled it to Mamma?" "He bited me." "I caughted 
hun." " Aunt Net earned to-day." " S. fighted me." 
" I growed last night." " H. maked it all herself." " I 
shutted the door." " I finded it myself." " He gaved it 
to me." " B. hided it so I can't get it." " I maked it all 
alone," etc. 
Difficulties The child's struggles begin with the tense forms of the 

with tense 

forms. verb. He first learns the form expressive of present action, 

since at the outset this is the only action that he can bring 
before his attention; things past and future are beyond his 
ken. When he gets the present form, he clings to it for a 
time in referring alike to simple past and to simple future 
events. Thus V., at about three years, comes out of the 
kitchen, saying, " My — pan — drink — out " = "I have 
been drinking (or I drank) out of the pan." The idea that 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 95 

he had drunk, and not that he was going to drink was de- 
noted by his gesticulating toward the kitchen, and show- 
ing by his manner that he had enjoyed it. Again he says, 
'' S. my scratch " (showing a hand marked with finger- 
nails) =*'S. scratched me." Still again, "Papa — Uni- 
versity. — go — to-day " = " Are you going to the Univer- 
sity to-day, Papa? " It is probable that all children pass 
through a stage when verbs in the present tense are made 
to do service for simple past and future tenses. Here 
again, grimace, gesture, intonation, and collocation of 
circumstances are all employed as substitutes for inflection, 

— as compensating factors for paucity of verbal forms. 

When the child does begin to use any of the special The ad- 
jectival 
conventionaHzed forms for past time, it seems to be first character 

of some 

the participle form used adjectively in large part. " Papa ^®^se 

— gone? " and " Papa going to-day? " are typical of the 
earliest uses of verbal forms. Soon after these expressions, 
others are heard like this: " Dollie — fallen — down " = 
" Dollie has fallen down; " but it is evident that the child 
is not here expressing a present-perfect-tense idea. His 
conception of the situation is not primarily actional in 
character; it does not concern an event having occurred 
previous to the present moment. He simply observes the 
doll in a certain condition, and the fallen down, as he em- 
ploys the terms, are principally adjectival^ in function. 

^ It is, of course, possible that down is here used with prepositional 
reference. One would need to know just what phase of the total situa- 



96 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Apparently the present-perfect-tense form, coming from the 
lips of children for the first five years or so, is descriptive 
or qualitative rather than historical or actional, regarded 
from the standpoint of the content of the child's conscious- 
ness in employing it. S., at five, says: "Some one has 
taken my hat;'' "The apples have fallen on the ground;" 
" The water has run out of the bath-tub," etc. Now in 
these situations, as I have observed him, what he aims to do 
is certainly to describe himself in his present condition; he 
is without a hat — he is hatless; the bath-tub has no 
water — it is waterless; the tree is appleless, and so on, 
His expressions cannot be said to denote conceptions of 
" completed action " in a grammatical sense. Doubtless 
the same principle holds for the past perfect tense, which, 
however, is never used, except mechanically, before the 
eighth or ninth year, and then only infrequently, according 
to my records.* H., speaking of her work at school, says 
that when she went to a certain class she " had forgotten 
the paper and pencil." Now one can tell that she was 
thinking of her paperless and pencilless condition, not of 
some " action completed in past time." See the principle 

tion was most prominent in the child's attention in order to be certain 
of his ground here. 

^ Constructions employing the perfect participle are rarely used by 
children until they get into school and study them ; and even then these 
constructions do not appear in their spontaneous utterances at all fre- 
quently. A simpler form will express their ideas with sufficient definite- 
ness, and this is doubtless true of unlettered adults. Instead of a child 
saying, "Having dressed myself, I came downstairs," he will make it 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 97 

illustrated in the following expressions used by H. in her 
eighth year: "The snow had -filled the walks;" "The 
teacher had called school when I got there; " " The sun had 
melted the ice off the walks," etc. The point is that the 
child, employing these expressions, is in most cases de- 
scribing a situation and not stating a sequence of events 
in the past.* 

But if this be the case, why does he not employ more 
direct adjectival terms, for they are simpler, as "The snow 
was all melted,''^ "The school was called,''^ and so on? 
As a matter of fact, the child, from four or five on to ten, 
say, does prefer these phrases. The past, or even the pres- 
ent, perfect tense does not come frequently from the lips 
of the young. A boy of five will say, " I tore my jacket," 
or "My jacket is torUj^ ten times, perhaps, where he will 
once say, "I have torn my jacket." This could hardly be 
said of a ten-year-old, though the past perfect tense is, 
relatively speaking, seldom employed at ten even. It must 
be repeated that what a child actually aims to accomplish 
in these expressions is to describe a situation as it actually 
exists. With regard to tense forms, he can probably not 
arrange events in such a complicated temporal pattern as 

" I dressed myself," or " I finished dressing myself." In like manner, all 
the more complicated participial constructions are employed only in for- 
mal writing in a manner to be described later. 

* Adults, too, of course, use parts of speech interchangeably in their 
reference. I say, "Professor Blank has lost his temper," and my 
thought is really adjectival in character. 

H 



98 



LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



The devel- 
opment of 
par- 
ticular 
tense 
forms. 



would be essential to employ the past perfect tense, say, 
with the precise function which the grammarians assign 
to it. It is doubtful if adults employ it with such function, 
at least in their ordinary use of it. The grammarian's 
or the logician's view is based upon the use of a mere con- 
ventionalized form, and not upon the psychological attitude 
of the one who employs it. 

As to the future perfect tense, I have not heard it used 
by a child before he commenced its study in school; and 
even then its spontaneous use is rare. This is apparently 
one of the forms reserved for maturity.' It is probable that 
it is not commonly employed even with grown people of 
limited intellectual development. Its intelligent employ- 
ment requires complicated mental processes of the nature 
of temporal orientation beyond the powers of young per- 
sons or of untrained older ones. 

At a relatively early period — S., K., and H. by the third 
year, V. considerably later — children use with some ease 
and accuracy the regular form of the verb for simple past 
time. Among the earliest inflections of this character I 
have noticed are: played , jumped^ tied, kissed, washed, 
pushed, climbed, helped, throwed, stopped. When the 
learner becomes somewhat used to the regular form 
for simple past time, he extends the principle of inflec- 
tion to all verbs, as was noted in some examples 
given above. For several years, at least, he exhibits 
this tendency strongly; and his parents and teachers 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 99 

must keep at him constantly to get him to use correctly 
the irregular forms. 

It may be observed in this connection that the novice 
has relatively little difficulty in expressing the continuance 
of action in past time, or in future time either, though the 
latter is heard much less frequently than the former. Even 
while the learner is having trouble with irregular forms of 
the simple past tense, he can say with facility, "I (or he) 
was doing this or that." Psychologically, this expression 
and the one for simple past time appear to be of substan- 
tially the same degree of complexity for the child. How- 
ever, in using this last mode, he seems to be giving expres- 
sion to an adjectival rather than a purely actional mental 
content. Possibly both contents are present and fused; 
or the content may be predominantly actional at one mo- 
ment and adjectival the next, depending upon the phase 
of the total situation which engages the speaker's attention. 
It seems to be the child's intention to describe himself 
rather than the activity he was performing ; but his de- 
scription concerns dynamic rather than static charac- 
teristics. 

The use of the future tense always comes later than the 
past tense, not because of the mechanical so much as the 
psychological difficulties. The child's consciousness is 
more explicit and definite with respect to past than to 
future experience. He comes from having performed an 
action, and it may be still dominating his intellectual, 



lOO LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

emotional, and to a certain extent his motor processes. At 
the moment it really has present value for him, and he 
uses the present tense to express it. But with increasing 
experience past events come, by a method which has been 
sketched elsewhere,^ to have a distinctive tone, and to be 
arranged in patterns in consciousness different from those 
occurring at the moment, and so they are gradually differen- 
tiated. The child in this way orients himself with reference 
to experiences, alike in the present and in the past. But 
the development of a sense of future time is more difficult, 
and is consequently somewhat delayed. It is probable 
that children from two to three or thereabouts often use 
shall and will in a purely mechanical way, picking them up 
by imitation, before they really need them, because they 
are used so frequently by the grown people about them. 

The children I have observed all showed a dawning sense 
of future time first in reference to some person preparing to 
go out. Their expression then would be of this type: 
"Papa going — University?" Then a little later 
this typical question would be asked at the breakfast 
table: "Papa, going — University to-day?" Contem- 
poraneous with these expressions were others like this: 
" I want to do this " (or that), or " I want to go here " 
(or there). In experience of this character, the sense of 
time to come is impressed upon the child because he has to 
wait for desired, or possibly for undesired, events. The 

* In the author's " Education as Adjustment," Chap. X. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER lOI 

child is constantly hearing expressions like this: " Dinner 
will be ready in half an hour; " " Your milk will be warm 
soon; " " Elizabeth will come over this afternoon," and 
so on. Then the child is incessantly asking questions like 
the following: " Can you go on the lake with me? " and 
he is receiving responses of this sort : " I can't go now, but 
I will go this afternoon." These experiences, in which he 
must wait for an event to occur, develop in him the sense of 
future time, and his elders supply him with the special terms 
appropriate for the designation thereof. So, often by three, 
— as early as this in the case of K., later considerably with 
v., — one may hear expressions from the child such as 
this: " I will come in a minute; " "I will go in a few 
seconds." It may be added that will, to express simple 
futurity, appears in the vocabulary some time before shall, 
and it meets all the child's needs. The child's attitudes 
are better expressed by the former than the latter term. 
Shall seems weaker; and it is relatively ill-suited to the 
vigorous, dynamic attitudes of the child.^ Shall is heard 
rarely even in the utterances of a ten- or an eleven-year-old 
child, who has easy mastery of a wide range of linguistic 
forms. One of the trials of the teacher in the sixth, seventh, 
and eighth grades, and even in the high school, is to get his 

^ It is recognized, of course, that the child hears will more frequently 
than shall, and so it becomes impressed upon him more strongly, and 
when he acquires one form for expressing a general situation he tends 
to use it in reaction upon all phases of the situation. 



I02 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Mode in 

early 

speech. 



Auxiliary 
verbs. 



students to use shall and will with grammatical accuracy 
on all occasions; as I have indicated above, will is the term 
first and most generally employed. 

It will not be necessary to dwell long over the imperative 
mode, for this is well suited to the child's attitudes, and he 
has no difficulty in correctly employing it in respect to any 
verb as soon as he gains even a slight familiarity with it. 
The child's attitude in the early years is essentially manda- 
tory; and long before he can employ conventional symbols 
he gives his commands by means of gesture, pantomime, 
and intonation. The first conventional words he uses 
are in some instances verbs with imperative significance. 
Take^ make, find, give, pull, throw, are examples. They 
are given imperative effect by intonation and grimace 
mainly. 

Before leaving the verbs, a word should be said regarding 
the auxiliaries. I have observed that can is normally 
used for may in the first period of the use of these acces- 
sories : Can * I go here or there or do this or that ? And 
later could is used for might. Can and could suit the nature 
of the child better, probably, than may and might; they are 
more dynamic, more suited to the simple, straightforward, 
urgent attitudes of the child. It appears that children 

* A friend commenting on this statement says children copy from their 
playmates this word can instead of may, and this is why they use it on 
all occasions. But they constantly hear their elders use may, and they 
are not influenced by it, though they may be imitating many other ex- 
pressions they hear. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER I03 

must be drilled in the use of may, or it will not be incorpo- 
rated in their speech until relatively late in their develop- 
ment, if indeed it will be adopted at all. One sees people 
who have grown to maturity without feeling the need of 
may. The same may be said of might. Would appears in 
the vocabulary sooner than could, and should comes still 
later; and there is much confusion in their use when the 
child is trying to get acquainted with them. But could 
settles into place first, and is used quite accurately in 
two sorts of situations as early as the fourth year, — (i) 
to obtain permission to perform some action, and (2) to 
indicate capacity or power to perform an action if the 
child had made the effort or if he chooses or had chosen 
to do so. The subtle distinctions giving warrant to, and 
really making necessary, the use of should are for the most 
part beyond the six- or even seven-year-old, though H. at 
eight and a half uses the word freely in such phrases 
as '' I should say so " ; " ShouldnH you think? " " Should 
I do this problem in this way?" "You shouldnH^ annoy 
B.," and so on. Some of these uses are largely mechani- 
cal, as " I should say so " ; but the others, while doubtless 
imitative in large part, yet appear to be employed with 
some sense of their fitness and their significance. 

^ Of course, " You shouldnH do " this or that appears considerably 
later than "You mustn't do" it. The child's relations to his associates 
is one in which must expresses his attitude more perfectly than should; 
the latter term implies the decadence of coercion, and the appeal to 
principles of conduct which should control present action. 



I04 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Making Finally, attention should be called to the child's readi- 

fom verbal ness in inflecting nouns to perform verbal function when- 
ever he is hard-pressed. S., at five, looking at a tragic scene 
on the bill-boards says, " Is that man going to dagger the 
other one? " So I have noted such expressions as these: 
" I am going to basket those apples." '' Look at that lady 
parasoling !^^ (waving her parasol in the air). "I footed 
(stamped) him." " I pailed him out " (took a turtle out 
of a wash-tub with a pail). " I needled him " (put a 
needle through a fly). " I want to go horsebackingy^ etc. 
H., overhearing some remarks concerning a new govern- 
ess coming into the house, asked, " When is she coming to 
governess us?" Sometimes children seem consciously to 
play with the function of words in this manner; but at 
other times they take liberties from dire necessity. It is 
probable that children are more active in this way than 
adults, for one reason because their needs are greater, 
not having a variety of linguistic resources at hand for all 
emergencies; but in addition to this, their linguistic ma- 
terials are more plastic than those of the adult, and their 
language sense — the sense of the ways in which words are 
constructed — seems often to be keener. Adults have, 
in large measure, settled down to the use of conventional 
forms, which have become so hardened that change seems 
relatively difiicult.^ The principle here in question prob- 

* Adults use nouns with verbal effect when''necessary, as in the case 
of junction, finance, referee, deed, and the like. But these usages have 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER I05 

ably applies to every phase of the child's linguistic activity, 
— the tendency to follow a method in the employment of 
words which has been pursued in the gaining of the vocabu- 
lary already mastered at any point in linguistic develop- 
ment. 

4. Inflection of the Adjective and the Adverb 

Most of the principles already discussed respecting de- Compara- 
velopmental phenomena arising from the child's reaction tioninthe 
upon the inflected forms of nouns, pronouns, and verbs, ®si»ning. 
apply with but slight modification to his reaction upon the 
inflected forms of adjectives and adverbs. Children at 
first designate by gesture, pantomime, etc., differences in 
the degree to which a person or object possesses any par- 
ticular attribute or quality. When H., at two years, wishes 
to indicate that her orange is very sour, she tastes it and 
*' makes up a horrid face," splutters, and pushes the orange 
away, which actions are significant to every one observing 
her. At this age she does not use any conventional verbal 
symbol to express her experience ; but at two and a half she 
can say our (sour). This term, uninflected, answers for all 
degrees of sourness, the comparative function being dis- 
charged in the concrete manner indicated. Then in the 
course of development the original, simple term becomes 
modified by limiting terms, — " 'ittysour,'^ "teeny bit sour," 

already become conventional ; the adult will rarely invent a novel usage, 
as the child does frequently. 



Io6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



"very sour," "very much sour," "awfuy (awfully) sour, "etc. 
These limiting terms are often [at first imitated, and used 
more or less mechanically; but as experiences increase and 
become differentiated, the terms can be used intelligently. 
I have not observed in the early stages of development, 
at two and a half or thereabouts, when modifiers begin to 
be employed, that persons or objects are compared with 
reference to particular attributes. It must be, reasoning 
in a more or less a priori way, that with the child from three 
or four months onward experience is being continually 
integrated, with the result that ever more intricate and 
elaborate complexes are being formed; and from this we 
would infer that quite early the gradation of similar experi- 
ences, according to the effect upon the organism, must go on 
in some sort of elementary fashion. But at the same time 
the feeling of values arising from this comparing activity is 
much less impressive to the child than that arising directly 
from a present vital experience. If H., tasting her orange 
this morning, has her experiences with oranges of previous 
mornings revived so that she can arrange their degrees of 
sourness in a scale, — if this occurs, the process must be 
wholly marginal, for her reaction has reference apparently 
to the present situation alone. The general principles of 
mental development aid us here, for they suggest that the 
greater the degree of immaturity the less the degree of 
organization of experience, and so the less the tendency to 
view objects in their quantitative or even qualitative rela- 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER I07 

tions to one another. Immature creatures, by which is 
meant those that have had only relatively narrow, undiffer- 
entiated, and unsystematized experience, are more com- 
pletely affected by a present experience than are those of 
greater maturity. Young children, speaking generally, 
give themselves more completely than do older children to 
the thing acting upon them at the moment, adapting them- 
selves to its attributes without much reference to other 
things, whether similar or not. At any rate, the comparing 
activity, so far as it is revealed linguistically, does not begin 
to manifest itself before the age of three or so, some time 
after the appearance of adjectival and adverbial function 
in the vocabulary. 

The first inflected form to appear is the superlative of the The first 
adjective, and relates to simultaneity of experience. It forms, 
comes " natural " to the child to employ the terms " big- 
gest," " strongest," " nicest," etc., on all occasions where 
he is measuring his own achievements or possessions with 
those of one or more of his fellows ; the child's attitudes 
in his social adjustments in the early years are often such 
as can be expressed best by the superlative degree. In due 
course, but probably only after some special instruction, the 
comparative form makes its appearance, and is employed in 
expressions Hke the following: " I am stronger than you; " 
" I can run jaster than you; " " You have more than me ; " 
*'My apple is gooder than yours; " " He is nicer to me 
than you; " ''That lion is awfuUer than the other one." 



Io8 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

So we hear from the mouths of children from three to four 
and a half such forms as beauti fuller, emptieVj worser, " on 
the topper (topmost) limb; " " give me more handier-cap " 
(give us a greater handicap — in a foot-race); "It is 
more windier on the back lawn than in front of the house," 
etc. It may be remarked in passing that there is a period 
in the child's acquisition of inflected forms of modifiers 
(and other parts of speech as well) when analogy and 
imitation are vying with one another, and he may follow 
the leading of analogy at one moment and of imitation the 
next. For instance, in the use of the comparative form of 
good, S., at four, will say better five times where he says 
gooder once (this is an estimate); but nevertheless, in times 
of' excitement or Hnguistic struggle, he will revert to the 
easier form, probably because it is the original and regular 
one. In all cases observed, I have noted this season of 
competition between the early analogical forms and the 
later conventional ones, and this, to repeat, in respect not 
only to modifiers, but to all inflected forms. 
The super- Once the novice has acquired the swing of the compara- 

lative de- 
gree, tive form he uses it very freely, and without regard to gram- 
matical rules on all occasions. "Mine is bigger than all 
of you," he will say; or more simply, "Mine is bigger,^* 
showing in his face and attitudes that he is taking account 
of every one present. However, the superlative form is 
dinned into his ears from every side, as when he boasts of 
his apple with "Mine is bigger ^^ his older sister holds up 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER I09 

hers and says, without the intention of instructing, of 
course, ''Mine is biggest ^^^ and this is illustrative of the way 
the social environment is acting on him incessantly. 

When the learner attempts to express a relationship of 
lower or of lowest degree, he is almost certain to get tangled; 
and often he abandons the task and goes over to the other 
pole of the relation, in which he expresses the possession 
of higher degree. Or perhaps he attacks the relation from 
another standpoint : ''Our lawn is not as green as Mr. S.'s ; " 
" We haven't as many leaves as any of the neighbors ; " 
" You all have had more rides than I have," etc. It seems 
that for a long time children avoid the less and least and 
fewer and fewest constructions; not as much as and not as 
many as come more " natural " to them. Of course they 
can, and frequently they do, express the relation in question 
by turning the objects compared around, and stating that 
one is greater than or in excess of the other: "Mr. S.'s 
grass is greener than ours;" "There are more children in 
our room than in V.'s," etc. It is probable that they could 
get on very well in all the ordinary situations of life, even if 
less and least, fewer and fewest, should be lost out of the 
language. H., at^nine and a half, occasionally uses the less 
and least constructions, and they have apparently come 
mainly from her reading, for it does not seem that these 
particular expressions stand out very prominently in every- 
day conversation even among adults. At any rate, the 
child's special modes of denoting relations of lower and 



no LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

lowest degree are so effective on the whole that the adults 
about him do not think it necessary to impress any better, 
or perhaps different, way upon him. 

5. Agreement in Early Speech 

Violations It may be observed, finally, that the novice, in the build- 
cipies of *°" iiig of bis sentences, has trouble in employing those forms 
that belong together according to conventional usage. My 
records show many violations of the simplest principles of 
concord, such as the following: " I are; " "I w; " " She 
(or he) am; " "He (or she) were; '' " My jeels bad; " 
" My wants this; " "I runs; " " The dogs runs; '' " Here 
comes the boys; " ''There goes V. and H.; " " My doesn't 
care; " " He (or she) donH do right; " " All of us was 
there; '^ " Every one were good to me; " and so on ad libi- 
tum. It is not necessary perhaps to do more than mention 
certain violations that often persist far along toward 
adulthood,* as: "Neither I nor the teacher were there; '^ 
" The teacher with all her pupils were on the playground; " 
" Two miles are not very far; '' " Four hours are enough in 
school," and the like. The principles of agreement in 
expressions of this character are too subtle for the young 
child, and his ear is not keen enough to detect the practice 
of his elders, so he proceeds by analogy, and treats any new 

* Even adults sometimes use the correlative neither . . . nor, with a 
plural verb, though they may, upon reflection, detect the grammatical 
error. It is evident that the psychological and the grammatical attitudes 
are not always congruent in the situation in question. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER III 

expression according to the principle indicated by some 
similar instance in his experience. He has gradually 
gained the notion (or rather the habit of speech) that when 
he uses a plural subject the form of the verb must agree, — 
*' John and Mary werej'^ as a type. Now when he says 
" Neither the teacher nor the pupil," he feels that he is 
using a plural subject, and he is then moved to employ 
a plural verb; and the principle has wide application. 
As a matter of fact, speaking psychologically, he has two 
persons in mind when he says, " Neither I nor the teacher," 
in just as real a sense as when he says, " Both I and the 
teacher." While logically only one is conceived of as act- 
ing at any moment, yet this is not true psychologically. 
Take the expression, "Neither S. nor I tackles well," 
and the same idea may be expressed thus, " We do not 
tackle well," in which it is apparent that both objects 
are thought of together and act congruently, which should 
give a plural verb. The grammatical distinction is an 
arbitrary one, and the child often ignores it when he meets 
it. 

Long after he has learned the grammatical reasons why 
he should use a singular verb, he will still, under linguistic 
stress, and sometimes without such a cause, fall back upon 
the old practice. Only by continual correction and repe- 
tition of the conventional form will he estabhsh a new 
habit, so that when he starts on the neither series he will 
automatically use the singular form of the verb. The prin- 



112 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

ciple applies without qualification to the several types of 
faulty concord indicated above. But it may be added here 
that the children I have observed have had unusual difii- 
culty in learning to use singular verbal forms in expressions 
like the following : " Four hours is enough in school ; " 
"Two times five is ten; " " The teacher, with all the pu- 
pils, was on the playground," etc. In all these instances 
the feehng is very strong that the subject is plural ; it sounds 
plural for one thing. In reality the subject may be plural, 
if the individual has the feeling of four separate hours 
rather than one period of time. In the expression, "The 
teacher, with all her children "... there is often psycho- 
logical plurality, just as fully as in the expression, "The 
teacher and all her children. ..." The grammatical 
distinction, that in the first case the speaker is conscious 
only or mainly of the teacher, or wishes to direct atten- 
tion to the teacher, while in the latter case he seeks to di- 
rect attention equally to the teacher and the pupils, may 
not always be the case ; indeed, such a distinction certainly 
does not exist in much of the child's usage of these expres- 
sions. 

The reia- The novice has difficulty usually in the use of the relative 

pronoun so that it may be in grammatical agreement with 
its antecedent. V., even at seven and a half, uses what 
for that or who or which in the bulk of his constructions 
requiring one of these relatives. He says, as a type of ex- 
pression: "He is the man what gave us a ride; " "This 



tive pro 
noun. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER II 3 

is the thing what I found.'' The first relative to appear 
is what, and it is employed very freely for some time. It 
is not at all easy to introduce other relatives into the vo- 
cabulary of some children; as I have indicated, V. has 
held to his what for a number of years, even in the face of 
considerable more or less explicit instruction. It really 
serves him very well, except that his elders keep suggesting 
who or that or which on proper occasions. Who gets estab- 
Hshed earlier than that, and which comes the last of the 
group named. It is not meant that which is never used 
until who or that is fully mastered; but it does not get per- 
manently into the vocabulary, so that it can be used freely, 
until the other relatives mentioned are fully in hand. 

6. Word Order in Early Sentence Construction 

All available evidence seems to indicate that there is The lack 
a lack of uniformity in the place relations of the several ityin 
parts of speech in the sentences of different children, and ^^l^^^ 
even of the same child at different times. Mrs. Hall ^ gives 
a sentence used by her son in his seventy-first week: 
" Pencil — write — Papa — book " (I want a pencil to 
write in Papa's book). I have recorded many sentences 
of similar content, but in some instances the children con- 
structed them differently in respect to word order. The 
following construction, while slightly different in content 

* Op. cit., p. 599. 



114 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

from the one given by Mrs. Hall, still, in the parts where 
the ideas are identical, the word order is not the same : 
" Papa — book — pencil — write '' (Papa, I want a pen- 
cil to write in this book). Now from the child who used 
this construction one day, I gained the following on an- 
other day : " Papa — pencil — book — write." These are 
mentioned as typical examples to indicate that there is 
no uniform word order for any given sentence employed 
by all novices or by any one novice at different times. It 
is to a certain extent apparently a matter of chance as to 
how the words will be arranged ;* the child's first sentences 
are exceedingly plastic with respect to word order. The 
various elements are in the beginning more or less indepen- 
dent in the matter of sequential relations; the novice does 
not feel that the subject must precede the verb, and so on. 
With development, however, these elements gradually lose 
much of their mobility, and get set quite permanently and 
immovably in their respective places according to the 
usages of the native tongue.^ With the practised tongue 
the characteristic sentential sequence becomes so thor- 
oughly established that it cannot depart therefrom except 
by conscious effort. But the young child is usually domi- 
nated by the total idea to be conveyed, and he is only discov- 

* Cf . Lukens, op. cU. 

' Of course, there is a certain amount of plasticity in the word order 
of the English tongue as used by adults; and yet in ordinary direct dis- 
course, such as the child employs solely, this order is practically the 
for all individuals and on all occasions. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER II 5 

ering how to express the elementary notions in a series 
of symbols. He has but recently emerged from the em- 
bryonic stage where his entire thought was bodied forth in 
a single symbol, accompanied by a unified gesticulative 
complex. So his thought tends now to be expressed in 
the old mono- verbal way, while at the same time the newly 
differentiated sentence elements urge themselves upon his 
attention. As a consequence, there is strain and stress to 
find terms for the partial ideas as they are apprehended 
more or less distinctly. 

While the sentential pattern is becoming established, 
children struggle over simple expressions, and keep back- 
ing up constantly in the attempt to find a new trail, as it 
were. The word which may best describe their condition 
is confusion. Seemingly, the idea to be conveyed rushes 
headlong, now in this direction, now in that, but it cannot 
make its final escape to the outer world by any one route. 
Doubtless it might be possible to prophesy that the child 
will use one of say four constructions, for in the simple 
sentence there are but few permutations possible. As he 
develops, however, we can say with ever greater assur- 
ance that he will always employ definite constructions, 
in respect to word order, since the conventional modes 
used by those with whom he associates will gradually 
become fixed in his own speech; but we cannot be more 
definite than this. 

There has been a great deal of discussion of the question, 



Il6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



The se- 
quence of 
elementary 
ideas ex- 
pressed in 
the sen- 
tence. 



What is the sequence in which the elementary ideas 
expressed in a sentence must appear? In different lan- 
guages the word order is different in some essential re- 
spects; and even in any one language the word order in 
the several sentential types may be varied considerably on 
different occasions. Spencer's theory is naturally sug- 
gested here: that word order is most "natural" which 
awakens elementary ideas in the sequence in which they 
can be most economically and effectively combined in the 
manner desired. It would not be appropriate to take up 
the general problem in question here; but it may be re- 
marked that in the young child's thinking there is prob- 
ably no such uniform, orderly procedure as appears in 
the typical EngHsh sentence of direct discourse. Take 
for illustration the following: *' Papa — sleep — baby — 
Anna" (Papa, Anna is putting baby to sleep). Again: 
" Papa — glasses — hard — bath-tub — fall " (Papa's 
glasses fell in the bath-tub hard). If these expressions are 
a faithful index of the child's mental processes, they indi- 
cate that the most impressive thing or phenomenon in a 
situation becomes focal in his consciousness, and tends to 
realize itself in speech first of all, though according to the 
logic of our speech something else should precede. School 
children often occasion their teachers much trouble by using 
elliptical sentences, in which they express what is focal in 
their thought, though the expression lacks logical sequence 
and completeness. However, it is probable that the 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER II 7 

sentence form, when it becomes established through imita- 
tion of the usage in the environment, must be followed on 
the linguistic side, even if the elementary ideas to be con- 
veyed appear originally in some different order. When 
an adult's glasses fell in the bath-tub, he might have in the 
focus of consciousness in his immediate reaction the notion 
of their not having been broken; and still when he came 
to express it formally he would reach this notion last in 
ordinary discourse ; ^ whereas the child would give it 
first. The adult has adopted the conventional model, 
which acts as a restraining force upon him in respect to the 
ordering of his ideas in expression; but the child is still 
free in a measure to convey his impressions in any order 
in which they present themselves. 

7. Word Order in Negative Constructions 

In the use of the simple negative all children seem at the The affirm- 
outset to place it after an affirmative. "Me — down- precedes 
stairs — fall — wo " indicates in principle the method of ^V^*^^' 
denoting negation in the earliest stages of sentence construc- 
tion. The sequence of terms in an affirmative statement 
may be different in different cases, but there does not seem 
to be variation in regard to the placing of the negative. 
Before a special negating symbol is differentiated, the func- 
tion is performed by a head-shake. The children I have 

^ Of course, the adult may express first the notion focal in his attention, 
as when he says, "saved," or "whole they still are." 



Il8 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

observed all employed this concrete form very freely before 
they acquired the symbols no and not; and it was uniformly 
used in denial of an affirmative. For illustration, V. points 
to his oatmeal, brings his hand to his mouth as though 
taking a spoonful of the food, then he makes believe at 
eating; and finally he shakes his head in denial} He does 
not first negate, and then show what he has in mind, which 
would, viewed from the psychological standpoint, seem 
to be more economical and effective. If negation comes 
at the beginning of a proposition, the auditor carries it on 
over the remaining part, which then performs the function 
of designation merely; but if the afiirmative attitude comes 
first, it must be displaced by the negative one, and this ne- 
cessitates delay in apprehension, and waste of energy. In 
negation the affirmative attitude ought not, as a general 
thing, to be instituted at all, although it is possible that 
under certain conditions the negative effect may be inten- 
sified when it follows an affirmative and negates it, as 
when an orator, eulogizing his hero, exclaims, **He was a 
coward. No ! " But it is clear that, in a case of this sort, 
the auditors are not really led to take the affirmative 
attitude when the affirmation is made, since the previous 
attitudes that have been aroused by the speaker make it 
impossible. And then when one makes a statement for 
the simple purpose of negating it, he indicates in his intona- 

^ Later he may simply point to any article of food he does not wish, 
and shake his head in denial. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER II9 

tions that he is not really affirming a statement, but is 
rather putting to himself a question for the sake of reply- 
ing thereto so as to dispel any doubts in the minds of his 
auditors. As a general principle, it seems that effective 
style usually observes this law of economy and efficiency, — 
of preventing the awakening of an affirmative attitude when 
a negative one is desired. 

In this connection mention should be made of children's The double 
tendency to use the double negative. " I haven't got no " ^ *^*' 
this or that is a typical form of negative used freely in the 
early stages of linguistic development, and it tends to per- 
sist in spite of much correction and exhortation.^ It is 
significant that untutored people generally employ the 
double negative; and it is found in early Enghsh writers. 
" I haven't any of " this or that comes with considerable 
difficulty, according to my observations. It is preceded 
usually by '' I hain't got none." Apparently " I haven't 
any " is not as strong, judged from the learner's standpoint, 
or that of the untutored man, as the '' cruder " expression. 
Even when reared amidst the best linguistic forms, the 
child finds " I hainH got no " best adapted to his needs. 

Observe a boy of five or six vigorously denying possession 
of some object which one of his fellows has charged upon 

* There is something in children's speech of the nature of a double 
afl&rmative, too. V. says, " Papa — drink — pan — out — yah " (Papa says 
I can drink out of the pan, yes). Again, " Papa up stairs, yah " ; " My go 
down town — uh, huh" (yes), etc. 



I20 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

him, and note how necessary it seems to be for him to use 
this typical barbarism. His dynamic, uninhibited dis- 
position requires forceful terms, forceful in sound as well 
as in significance. In adult communication it is not so 
essential to use mechanically forceful terms, since the 
mature mind can add force as required out of its own 
experience; simple, restrained expression may arouse the 
deepest feeling and most vigorous action. But it is other- 
wise with the immature mind; it must be stirred by the 
very impact of the stimulus, linguistic or otherwise, which 
is applied. It will be remembered that in preceding chap- 
ters it has been found necessary, in order to explain certain 
of the child's usages, to call upon this principle, — of lin- 
guistic forms being determined by the undefined feeling 
the user has of their adaptability to produce the effects 
he desires. What he wants is obvious results in the reac- 
tions of people, and he goes after them without regard for 
grammatical customs suited to an advanced stage of mental 
development. 

Summary. Summing up the principal points made in this chapter, we 

have the following : — 

1. As parts of speech are differentiated from the original 
sentence-word to express increasingly complex mental pro- 
cesses, so the parts of speech themselves are differentiated to 
express special relations in thought. 

2. Three factors cooperate in determining the child's use 
of inflected forms : (a) increasing differentiation of experience ; 
(b) imitation, both mechanical and reflective ; and (c) habit. 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 121 

3. In the inflection of the noun, the nominative form only 
is employed at the outset. This is used to discharge possessive 
function until the child has progressed quite a distance in the 
mastery of the sentence. 

4. The novice does not experience much trouble in the use 
of the plural forms of nouns when they are regular, but he 
generally goes astray on the irregular forms. 

5. The correct grammatical use of the various forms of the 
pronouns comes only after much experience. The child at the 
outset gives the names of each person in a group when the 
adult would use we. He, she, our, they, his, their, hers, them, 
who, its, whose, and whom are mastered in the order given. 

6. The child meets with special difficulties in mastering 
the inflections of the verb; his feeling for regularity and uni- 
formity in experience, and his tendency to organize his expe- 
riences inductively, are often a handicap to him in handling 
his verbs, as when he says, " I seed,"*^ " I runned,'^ " I drinked," 
etc. 

7. The learner always has trouble with the tense forms of 
the verb. By employing gesture, grimace, etc., he makes the 
form for present action express simple past and simple future 
action for some time. 

8. When the child begins to use any of the special conven- 
tionalized forms for action in the past, it seems to be first the 
participle used adjectivally in large part. In employing par- 
ticipial present perfect and pluperfect tense forms, the child is 
really describing a situation, speaking psychologically, rather 
than stating the sequence of events in the past. 

9. The future perfect tense is rarely used spontaneously 
until it has been studied in the school, and even then it is spar- 
ingly employed. 



122 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

10. The simple future appears later than the simple past tense. 
The child has little difficulty in expressing the continuance 
of action in past and in future time, though the latter is heard 
much less frequently than the former. 

11. Will, used to express simple futurity, appears consid- 
erably later than shall; it seems to be better adapted to the 
nature of the young child. 

12. The imperative mode presents no difficulties to the 
child; once he has gained familiarity with a verb. 

13. Ca?z is used for some time in the place of wa;y; the latter 
term is not as "strong" as the former. Could is used for some 
time in the place of might and should. 

14. The child very readily inflects nouns so that they may 
discharge verbal function. 

15. Comparative function is at the outset expressed by 
grimace, gesture, etc. 

16. With the young child the feeling of value arising from 
the comparing activity is much less consequential than that 
arising directly from a present vital experience. 

17. The first inflected form of a modifier to appear is the 
superlative of the adjective. From the psychological stand- 
point, there is no reason why the superlative form should not 
be used to express all comparative relations. 

18. When the comparative form is once impressed upon the 
child, he often tends to use it on all occasions where objects 
are compared. 

19. Children avoid the less and least, and fewer and fewest 
constructions, using in their place other forms that meet their 
needs very well. 

20. At the outset the child violates some of the simplest 
principles of concord, as " I a;-^," " I w," ''The dogs ntns," 



INFLECTION, AGREEMENT, AND WORD ORDER 1 23 

etc. The rules for concord in the English language are in 
many instances purely arbitrary, and it is inevitable that the 
child, following his tendency to treat new linguistic situations 
analogically, should make many grammatical blunders. 

2 1 . The novice has difficulty usually in the right grammatical 
use of the relative pronoun. What is often used for whOj 
which, and thai. 

22. There is a lack of uniformity in the place relations of 
the several parts of speech in the child's sentences. These 
sentences are exceedingly plastic in respect to the order of the 
words. They may not appear in the same order in different 
sentences constructed by the same child. 

23. It is probable that the word order in the child's sen- 
tences does not correspond always and exactly with the se- 
quence of elementary ideas expressed in the sentence. 

24. In negative constructions, the affirmative form precedes 
the negation. 

25. The child uses the double negative, probably because 
it seems more emphatic than the conventional mode. 



CHAPTER VI 

DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 

I. Inheritance of Meanings 
Linguistic We have seen that the child comes among us the heir 

inheritance 

is of a social, of all the ages of linguistic evolution. But his heritage is 

not a physi- 
cal, charac- of the nature of social, and not of physical, heredity; that 

is, in order to profit by the linguistic achievements of the 
race he must learn them, either by more or less incidental 
imitation and assimilation, or by deliberate effort for a 
purpose. He does not inherit a single conventional symbol 
which he can use to denote the object, phenomenon, or 
situation which in the course of racial evolution it has come 
to designate or describe. Now, theoretically, all verbal 
symbols have a more or less definite content established, 
in most cases, as a result of long ages of racial experience. 
This does not mean that any particular symbol, as " virtue," 
say, has the same meaning for all who see it, hear it, or use 
it. On the contrary, it is generally recognized that the 
content of any word differs to a greater or less extent in 
different minds; and the more general and abstract the 
term, the greater the likelihood of variation in its significa- 
tion. Nevertheless, these variations concern the more par- 
ticular and special references of symbols, and not their 

124 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I25 

fundamental meanings. There is a general and basal 
meaning (possibly feeling would be a better word) for the 
term '' virtue " which all persons possess who can be said 
to have any comprehension of it at all. With increased 
experience, either in thought or in action, this general 
attitude or understanding becomes differentiated and par- 
ticularized in one direction or another. To the educated 
man, who has had richly varied and vital social contact, 
*' virtue," while denoting certain general attitudes of per- 
sons which every one appreciates, will denote in addition 
very complicated social and moral attitudes. Of course, 
such a man will be greatly influenced in the meaning he 
ascribes to " virtue " by his sense of the situations which 
the people in his " class " in the community use the term 
to describe, and he will be influenced in the same way by 
the Hterature which he reads, and in which the term occurs; 
but being a man of large social experience, he will, to some 
extent, develop particularized meanings of his own. He 
will extend the general attitudes denoted by the community 
use of the word to relations not included therein. How- 
ever, to the man of limited experience, alike in thought and 
in deed, or very special experience, who, on this account, 
has not been placed in situations where complex factors 
have been operating, where there has been conflict of mo- 
tives, where diverse interests have clashed and variation 
has been an important factor, — the man who has lived 
under uniform conditions, and these of a simple character, 



126 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

will not, speaking generally, read varied particularized 
meanings into the term "virtue"; he will follow the gen- 
eral community usage of the word. These particulariza- 
tions appear only as a result of a stress of circumstances, 
where complex conditions require pruning here and exten- 
sion there. Thus, as educative experience accumulates, 
the terms which relate to it will be constantly changing 
in their relation to the more subtle phases of the experience; 
and this is true of racial as of individual evolution. 
Evoiu- The principle in question here will bear emphasis, 

changes Most symbols must have more or less special meaning for 
ing?.^*^" individual minds, according as the sort of experiences to 
which they relate have been greater or less or of a differ- 
ent character in different cases; but at the same time the 
symbol in its fundamental meaning will be understood in 
much the same way by practically all the persons of any age 
and community. Emphasis is placed on age and com- 
munity; for words, particularly those having somewhat 
abstract signification, are subject, like all biological phe- 
nomena, to evolutionary changes. It is a very simple lin- 
guistic fact that *' virtue," to keep to our typical symbol, 
did not signify just the same attributes to the people who 
invented it that it signifies to most of the people who use 
it to-day. Philologists, such as Max Miiller, Whitney, et al, 
maintain that all our terms denoting attributes of mind or 
character and the like originally referred to physical objects 
or characteristics or events. Thus " virtue " in its early 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 12 7 

history signified the conduct of a strong, courageous, virile 
man, when placed in physical situations. But as mental 
development has proceeded in the race, social and ethical 
relations have become ever more prominent in thought 
and expression; and while certain words have been coined 
to supply the need, still this need has been more generally 
met by extending the reference of symbols already in use. 
As a matter of fact, in the evolution of thought respecting 
mental and " spiritual " attributes and phenomena, the 
transition is always very gradual from physical attributes 
and phenomena. Things mental are interpreted in terms 
of things physical; literature abounds in allusions to a 
strong mind, a sharp j keen mind, a well-cultivated mind, 
a polished mind, etc. With evolution the physical mean- 
ings of terms relating to mental and ethical objects and 
relations constantly decline, but they probably never en- 
tirely disappear. It happens inevitably, then, that, given 
a body of verbal symbols, that community which occupies 
the highest place in psychical development will use these 
terms with more distinctive non-physical reference than 
will a community living on a low psychological plane; but 
yet their fundamental meanings will be the same in both 
communities. 

2. Extent and Content of Meaning in the Child's Symbols 

Our problem relates specifically to the course which the 
child pursues in acquiring the significations which the per- 
sons in his community attach to the terms he hears, and 



128 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



later sees in his reading. It has been my experience that 
when children are first learning words employed by adults 
in an abstract way, they usually give them concrete refer- 
ence. Passing over the terms that are never used except 
concretely, I may illustrate the principle in question by 
H.'s interpretation of the term " vanity " in her seventh 
year. It meant to her a person looking in a mirror. She 
got this notion in part from a picture bearing the title Van- 
ity, and representing a richly attired young woman view- 
ing herself with evident pride. H. apparently missed 
everything in the situation but the simple act of looking at 
one's self in a mirror, and, of course, her word came to 
connote just this. So far as one could tell, the word did 
not include the notion of looking at one's self with pride. 
Evidently the expression for pride was not sufficiently 
impressive to arrest H.'s attention. Her notion was not 
amplified or even modified by the remark of an adult who 
was present, and who observed, " People who look at 
themselves in mirrors have vanity." It is doubtful if H. 
had previously come across the word in her reading or 
conversation in such a connection that it caught her 
attention; but if she had she could have hardly read mean- 
ing into it, except in a most indefinite way. She might, 
perhaps, have felt that it had reference to something people 
do not quite indorse. Probably this is, in principle, the 
first step the young always take in dealing with new terms. 
They are able to gather from the context that the word is 



DEVELOPMENT OF JilEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I29 

somehow associated with pleasant or with unpleasant ex- 
perience, with things forbidden or allowed, and so on. 
Ask a child who is taking this first step to give you the force 
of a paragraph, and he may be able to do it quite well; but 
when he attempts to define special words you may pick out, 
you may find he is utterly unable to do so. His under- 
standing's likely to go no further than the general bearing 
of the total thing, without an adequate appreciation of 
just what part each element plays in producing the effect of 
the whole. His mental content established by the para- 
graph is undifferentiated; or in some cases it may concern 
a more or less unimportant aspect of the thing or situation 
in question. It is probable, though, that all terms which 
do not relate quite obviously to concrete situations in the 
learner's immediate environment will be reacted upon in 
the beginning in the indefinite, non-specialized, or mis- 
prised manner indicated. 

We may notice here the tendency of the child to use concrete 
certain of his first concrete words with extraordinarily mo^iyhave 
broad extent. Sully cites an instance where a child, hav- [^ *°° ^ ^ 

•^ ' broad extent 

ing heard the word " quack " used to designate ducks on i^ t^^ be- 

° ^ ° ginning. 

a pond of water, extended the term to include the lake and 
water in general. In a previous chapter I mentioned the 
range of meaning of the word " ndobbin '' as used by K. 
during her second year. It denoted not only all kinds of 
food and drink, but the dining room, the kitchen, food 
receptacles, the closet where malted milk tablets were kept, 



130 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

apple trees, and even the motions and sounds made in 
eating. Darwin ^ noticed that when his child was a year 
old he invented the word mum for food. This he used 
" as a substantive of wide significance." He called sugar 
shu mum; and after he learned the word "black" he 
" called Ucorice Uack shu mum.^^ Preyer's boy used the 
word atta with fifteen different meanings. This phe- 
nomenon is no doubt due in part to the child's linguistic 
poverty; but it is probably due in part also to his tendency 
to conceive as wholes situations which the adult would not 
regard in a synthetic way at all. Objects which have only 
a contiguous relation with one another in the world are 
less likely to be unified in the adult's than in the child's 
consciousness. With the adult, an individual thing may 
be isolated from its milieu, and dealt with as a distinct 
object, because experience has shown that it has a dis- 
tinctive character. But it is otherwise with the child; 
mere contiguous relationships in nature are apt to function 
in his mind as vital and essential. To the latter, the duck 
is just one element of a total situation taken in at a glance; 
it cannot be isolated completely and regarded as a thing-in- 
itself, because the child has not had vital experience with 
it as a thing apart, which would serve to give it individu- 
ality, to establish it as an object to be reacted upon in a 
special way. It is probable that situations in the environ- 
ment, like that of the duck and the lake, are not differ- 
» See his "Biographical Sketch of an Infant," "Mind," Vol. II, p.^292. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 131 

entiated until the child discovers that the various elements 
affect him in vitally different ways, and must be dealt 
with, each in a very particular manner. These experiences 
in adjustment lead to breaking up total situations in the 
environment, and differentiating the elements thereof in 
attention; and of course enlarging experience may lead 
to integration again on a grander scale, as it is discovered 
that objects, even if not contiguous in space, may be reacted 
upon in much the same way. But the point to be noted 
here is that, as a general principle, with increasing expe- 
rience, objects originally merged in a total complex slowly 
gain individuality, and so come to stand out prominently 
in the original patterns, and in time, if they are of sufficient 
value in adjustment, they may get freed altogether from 
their primordial connections. 

Students of child linguistics have not, it seems, attached And again 
sufficient importance to the disposition of the child under have very- 
certain conditions to use his terms with extraordinarily ^^'^^ 
narrow extent. To illustrate the principle, a child was 
greatly impressed with the horns of a buck the first time he 
saw him. The father used the term ''sheep" several times 
while the creature was being inspected, and it was dis- 
covered afterward that the child had made the association 
between the word and the animal's horns, so now sheep 
signifies primarily horns, whether seen in pictures or in real 
life. Numerous illustrations ^ of this principle are given 

^ See, for example, the instances cited by Chamberlain, op. cit. 



132 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

farther along; but the principle I wish to emphasize here is 
that often a novice is impressed with a more or less unim- 
portant detail of a situation, and the language of the adult 
in referring to the situation is given far too narrow meaning. 
It is a commonplace that during the period of develop- 
ment one's notions of most objects with which he comes 
in contact must be constantly changing to a greater or 
less extent, at least in details. Increasing experience brings 
out new factors, develops new relationships, emphasizes 
particular elements in even familiar things.^ In another 
connection,^ an attempt has been made to trace the de- 
velopmental order in the elaboration of typical idea-com- 
plexes, and to show in what epochs, or rather in what 
sequential order, typical notions are modelled into perma- 
nent form most rapidly. Now, this change with develop- 
ment in the content of ideas must be revealed in the child's 
use of symbols and his interpretation of them, though it is 
probable that evolution in ideas and in linguistic usage 
do not run precisely parallel. In some cases linguistic 
forms tend to get set for a time, and so they do not keep pace 

* The principle at issue here is recognized, though in its relation to 
arrested linguistic development, in the following from Chambers (" How 
Words get Meaning," Fed. Sent., March, 1904, Vol. XI, p. 48) : "Perhaps 
the only — certainly the greatest — cause of prolonging the period of 
vaguely right meaning in the growth of a word's content is overemphasis 
on some specific application of the word. This emphasis so fixes the par- 
ticular meaning that the concept is arrested at that point and develops 
no further." 

2 In my '* Education as Adjustment," Part III. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 1 33 

with the changes taking place in mental content. In other 
cases the learner mechanically imitates expressions before 
his thought warrants or requires their use. So it is never 
safe to advance definite statements about a child's think- 
ing, using his language, measured by adult standards, as 
the sole criterion. 

In this connection a word may be said respecting the 
results gained by Binet,^ Hall,^ Barnes,^ and others in their 
studies upon the contents of children's minds, and the 
definitions they give for familiar words. Take, for exam- 
ple, a question like this : " What is the sun ? " The young- 
est children's responses almost universally have reference 
to its shining or its being round like a ball in the sky. 
Older children in the grammar school refer to its heat- 
and light- giving properties, its making things grow, its 
supporting life, and so on. And pupils in the high school 
generally speak of it as an astronomical body, mentioning 
its relation to the earth, etc. Asked what becomes of the 
sun when it sets, children at first say it goes into the 
ground, or into the lake, or behind the hills, or back of the 
clouds, or God takes it into heaven, or He puts it to bed, 
etc. Children of older years, however, use terms gained 
from their geography lessons or from talks on astronomy 
by the parents or the teacher. 

^Perceptions d^ enfant, Revtie Philosophique, VoL XXX, pp. 518-61 1. 

2 " Contents of Children's Minds on entering School," New York, 1893. 

3 "How Words get Content," in "Studies in Education," Vol. I, pp. 
43-61. 



134 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

What is thus true in respect to statements relating to 
this particular object is true in principle of all objects 
whatsoever with which the child has relations. The terms 
he employs to describe them change as he develops, for 
the reason principally that his notions of the objects change 
to a greater or less degree as his experience becomes more 
generous and intimate; but it is certain that at times his 
experience grows faster than his linguistic abiHty, and at 
other times he acquires terms beyond what his experience 
requires. 

Chamberlain * has recently given the results of some stud- 
ies on his child, which illustrate the principle in question, 
and also principles referred to above, where the child uses 
conventional terms with too broad extent in some cases, 
and too narrow extent in others. Of course, one cannot 
say that these statements indicate exactly what the child 
understands by a given term; but they probably show 
what is uppermost in consciousness when the term is 
used, though special conditions of the moment may have 
brought into the focus factors which, under other condi- 
tions, would not appear. 

Chamberlain gives his child's responses to the question, 
*' What is . . . for? " when she was thirty-three months 
of age. The following are typical " definitions " : — 

"School: All the children do (go) in, an' ladies and dirls. 
Church: Why, the people do in an' ting (sing) and ting an' 
^ See the Ped. Sem.j Vol. XI, pp. 24-263, 413-451. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 1 35 

ting. Store: People do in an' buy tomes in for zeir dinna'. 
Book: Why, it's a book to read. Window: Why, that's a 
window to look out. Clock: Why, it's to wind it up. Picture: 
To look at. Pen: It's to write wiz. Paper: It's to write on 
when I write on. Street: To do out on. Water: To trow 
'tones in. Trees: Wind blows the trees down; they burn the 
trees down in the woods. Flowers: They are to 'pell (smell). 
Dogs : Why, dogs are to tay bow-bow-bow ! Doors : To chut 
the doors. Knives : They are to tut. Forks : They are to eat 
wiz. Cups: They are to drink out. Spoons: They are to eat 
toffee wiz. Fire: Is to burn things up. Ice: Ice is told. 
Milk: It's to drink. Tea: It's to eat. Coffee: It's to eat 
wiz a 'poon. Safety-pin: To pin your dress wiz. Oranges: 
They are to put on the table. Potatoes: They are to took 
(cook). Lettuce: They are to put on talad. Scissors: They 
are to tut. Sewing-machine : To tew. Refrigerator : It's to 
put thing in. Plates: They're to eat on. Salt: It's to put 
on meat I duess. Candy: It's to eat. Letter: It's to put 
paper in. Stamp: To post envelopes. Lamp: It's to light. 
Stove: Why, it's to warm things on. Oven: To put things 
on. Mamma: You are the lady. Father: He's a man. 
He's a tather. Ruth: I'm a little dirl. Bath: To have 
dollies in to wash. Nose: It's to 'teeze (sneeze). Horse: 
To ride in. Cow: To milk. Mouth: To eat. Picnic: 
You eat the pickinic before it gets bad. Smoke: 'Poke is to 
tome out of 'poke-tack. Table: This is a table to eat. Chair :^ 
It's to tit on. Broom: It's to twxep. Mirror: A mirror's 
to look in. Eyes: They are to look at pictures. Chimney: 
It's for tanta tlaus to do in. Fly: To fly around. Ground: 
The ground is drass and dirt to dig. Rooster: He's to tay 
whr-u-whr. Birds:, They are to ting. Key: To lock the 



136 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

door with. Money: It's to put in my pocket-book. Garden: 
It's a darden to put radishes on. Piazza: To do (go) out in 
our back yard. Houses: They are for people to do (go) in. 
Lemons: Why, they are to put in a pitcher an' to eat. Chick- 
ens: They are to do in their own Httle house. Butter: Butter 
is to put on bread. Pepper: Why, pepper does (goes) right in 
your nose. Umbrella: To do (du) around your head this way 
(making gesture with hand; she then said she would get the 
umbrella and show how — this she did). Wheels: Wheels are 
to belong to wagons. Spool: To put on needles. Piano: 
It's to play on. Wall paper: Is to not trats (scratch) it. 
Frog: Trogs are down in the water. Fence: A fence is to do 
(go) around here (making a circle with her finger). Ham- 
mock: Why, it's to t wing. Hammer: To put tacks in. Type- 
writer: Why, it's to typewrite on. Snow: Tow is to draggle 
in. Leaves : Why, they are to drow (grow) over. Beads : They 
are to put around your neck. Carpets: Why, they are to put 
on the floa'. Hair: It's to put on your head. Hills: They 
are to do (go) up and to walk into Boothbay Harbor. Stones: 
They are to trow in the water. Soap: It's to trub (scrub) 
your hair. Wagon: It's to ride in — Tam's wagon. Towels: 
They are to wipe your face wiz. Rubbers: They are to put 
on your teet and not let 'em be wet. Balls: They are to 
bounce. Balloons: To 'tick (stick) out the window an' let 
'em blow. Babies: To put in tarriage. Bicycle: By'cles are 
to ride on. Bumblebees: They are to do (go) on fiowa's. 
Curtains: They are to put on the window. Bottles: They are 
to put in ginger-ale. Napkins: They are to put round your 
neck.^ 

^ The reader will notice that some of these ** definitions " are really 
not definitions in the dictionary sense at all, but only simple statements 
of the child's first reaction upon the objects in question. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I37 

3. Reaction of the Alter in determining Meanings 

We have seen some of the forces at work pruning, amend- The prin- 
ciple illus- 
ing, and extending the child's interpretation and use of trated. 

conventional symbols during the non-reflective period, but 
one of the most potent factors of all has only been hinted 
at. This factor, which is so effective in bringing the child^s 
interpretations and usages into accord with community 
or racial interpretations and usages, is the reaction of the 
social environment upon his linguistic performances. Any 
interpretation or usage of a symbol which fares well and 
produces the desired effect — anything which will pass 
with the child's associates — will tend to persist in his vo- 
cabulary; but any interpretation or usage which is not 
hospitably received, which is laughed at or criticised, or 
which is not reacted upon in the desired manner, must be 
abandoned, and something more effective put in its place. 
For illustration, S., at four, began to use the word imagi- 
nation, first in a more or less spontaneous or playful way, 
apparently, for he would apply it to any undesirable quality 
in objects, animate or inanimate. Judging from the occa- 
sions on which he employed it, and the accompanying tone 
of voice and facial expression, he evidently thought that 
for a thing to have imagination was not quite proper. To 
say '' he was imaginative," or ''it has imagination," was 
to find fault with the person or thing in question, though 
not in any very serious manner. Now, he must have 



138 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

gained this feeling about '' imagination " from the way 
in which his elders used it originally in his presence; 
they applied it to a child who did not represent exactly 
the thing or situation he was describing. So in reality 
" he has a lively imagination " had the effect of a mild 
reproach. S. caught the general attitude, but he missed 
the particular denotation of the word, and so for a period 
it became his term for moderate censure. But it could not 
remain stationary long, for his auditors reacted in ways 
which made him realize that he was not using it correctly. 
When S., trying to drive a nail in a box and being unable 
to prevent its turning over on him, finally gives vent to his 
feelings by exclaiming, " You old thing, you have im- 
agination ! " every one within reach makes merry at his 
expense. H., vv^ho has entered the '' tormenting " age, 
takes up *' imagination " and makes fun over S.'s use of it. 
She says, with suitable intonation and grimacing, " I 
should say nails must have a fine imagination ! " "I 
wish, S., you would ask them what their imagination is 
about." " I'll tell my teacher that S. has a nail that has 
imagination." And so she runs on, and S. is profiting 
by the experience. He gains the feeling that the word 
was not used right on that occasion. It must be that 
" imagination " does not belong to nails. Of course, he 
does not philosophize about the matter, no more than he 
does about the candle that has burned him; he simply 
takes note of the outcome of his action, and governs accord- 
ingly his linguistic conduct in the future. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 1 39 

Supplementary to H.'s raillery, which is participated in The 
to some extent by all present, the father suggests to S. words Sto° 
that things like nails and hammers, etc., do not have p^°p®^ 
imagination, only boys and girls and men and women. 
This helps the novice to get his bearings; it limits, defines 
the range of application of his new term. But, of course, 
the most has yet to be done in order that the term may be 
moulded into proper shape. This moulding is done con- 
stantly by the assistance of the child's associates and elders, 
supplemented in due course by his reading, and his use 
of the dictionary. The learner is not in the least indiffer- 
ent with respect to the reaction of the people about him 
upon his linguistic experiments. He becomes more and 
more observant of the particular sense in which any word 
is used by his parents, teacher, and comrades, just in the 
measure that his own use of it does not result advanta- 
geously. He would never give it the slightest heed if his use 
of it turned out happily in all instances, a principle which 
is abundantly illustrated in his treatment of the simpler 
concrete words he learns earhest, as "hat," for example, 
and his use of which is very likely to be in harmony with 
environmental custom. Then S. aids himself in another 
way: he seeks help from his elders when they employ 
the word. " What means * imagination ' ? " is typical of 
questions children are incessantly asking from four on- 
ward, until they gain a certain degree of mastery of all the 
terms of ordinary usage. Finally, as suggested above, 



140 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

when S. comes to read for himself, and sees this term in 
many contexts, and when he *' studies " it in school, mak- 
ing use of a dictionary, perhaps, the moulding process goes 
on most rapidly, and in due course is brought to a greater 
or less degree of completion; though it is probable that for 
many individuals the development of such a term as " im- 
agination " never reaches completion, in the sense that its 
meaning does not further change in any respect. Such in 
general outline is the natural history of every symbol of 
which " imagination " is typical. 
The chUd's The attempt has been made on preceding pages to im- 
as a growing prcss the fact that a child^s vocabulary resembles a devel- 
organism. Qpjng organism. At any moment there will be found in it 
words, phrases, and expressions well-nigh matured, so 
that they will change but little throughout all the events of 
later Hfe. These words and phrases relate to the indi- 
vidual's most familiar and well-defined experience. But 
at this same moment there will be found other terms, 
phrases, and expressions in all stages of immaturity. Some 
will be in the germ-cell stage even, so that the entire course 
of development lies before them. These are the terms 
and phrases that relate to the very newest and most remote 
of the child's experiences. Then there are words and 
phrases which are afloat in the child's environment, and 
he catches them up and plays with them, having only the 
dimmest sort of notion respecting their significance; or 
he may have an entirely erroneous notion of their meaning. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I4I 

But he will try them on in his expression in a more or less 
incidental way, and then the maturing process will begin; 
the moment he gets social reaction upon his usage, that 
moment the word starts on its developmental course. Thus, 
as new realms of experience become familiar, the terms 
relating to them are mastered ; and the movement of growth 
is always in the direction of the regions yet to be subdued. 
This general principle has been well expressed by Cham- 
bers, ^ and I may quote a few of his sentences. ... "In 
the early years of life the child has an accurate knowledge 
(if, indeed, he can be said to have accurate knowledge of 
anything) of only those things which are most immediate 
and familiar, and an adequate reaction for only those situa- 
tions which are fairly constant or frequently recurrent; 
outside the realm of familiarity is a region whose objects 
are slightly known and whose situations are met by the 
child in a bungling sort of adjustment; beyond this field, 
again, is a zone of mystery, of illusion, of mistakes and 
failures in adaptation. And finally, beyond it all is the 
region of the great unknown, and the region whose ob- 
jects, personages, and situations have never yet directly 
affected the child's life in the slightest degree. The child 
unquestionably perceives the world through a mental fog. 
But as the sun of experiences rises higher and higher these 
boundaries are beaten back. Things are constantly pro- 
jected from the great unknown into the region of mystery, 

^ Op. cit., p. 30. 



142 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

illusion, and error. The formerly mysterious and mistaken 
becomes the vaguely perceived, the slightly known, the 
clumsily used; while what is partially imderstood is trans- 
formed into the familiar and perfectly-adjusted-to affair 
of common experience. Farther and farther do the 
boundaries recede, narrower and narrower do the outlying 
zones become, until in the mature scholar the circum- 
ference of the circle of things clearly understood and 
situations adequately reacted to has become coincident 
with the boundary of human knowledge in his field. Then 
the only condition of his perfect understanding of any new 
object or situation projected within his horizon is the focus- 
ing of his apperception-mass upon it." 

4. Apperception in the Gaining of New Symbols 
The gen- At various points in the preceding discussion attention 

eral prin- 
ciple of has been called to the influence which previous linguistic 

tion^appiied experience exerts upon present reaction in a new linguistic 
expwfences situation. But there is a special phase of the general 
matter which needs mention here. Words that are some- 
what similar, in either sound or visual form, are likely 
in the early stages of learning to be interpreted and used 
as having exactly the same significance. This tendency 
is of immense importance in the learner's linguistic develop- 
ment.^ For one thing, by means of it he greatly econo- 

^ In passing it may be mentioned that visual and auditory similarity 
often lead the pupil astray temporarily. A beginner comes across the 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I43 

mizes his time and energy, since he can assimilate new 
words through others that he has already mastered. Take, 
for a very simple illustration, the words neWy and newness, 
newly, new-born, New Year, and new-mown. Each one 
of these terms has a special significance which is denoted 
but in part by the term new, and the learner can get this 
special meaning only by coming upon the term often in 
different contexts. But the point is that, having made 
an adjustment in response to the term new, this general 
attitude is reestablished whenever the learner sees the term 
in any connection. The particularization of this general 
attitude, such as is indicated by any special term, can be 
attained only by particular experience; but no matter how 
many and how subtle and refined particularizations are 
made, the original general attitude will always persist, and 

word " cat," and he calls it " rat." The two pictures are so much alike that 
they come up interchangeably; and it happens now that the wrong one 
comes to the front. On the next occasion, however, the pupil may not 
make this mistake. This phenomenon may be observed to a greater or 
less extent in the reading of all children, and even in the case of some 
adults who are "suggestible" in matters of this sort. Adults who take 
up the reading of a foreign language make just such mistakes in principle 
as the child does, and for a similar reason. Any observer of children 
knows that they are constantly putting queer interpretations on the spoken 
language of adults, largely because of their catching parts of strange 
words and filling them out from their own store. This, of course, is 
simple suggestion in the field of linguistics. I shall have more to say 
of the general principle in the chapter on reading ; and in the illustrations 
quoted from Barnes and Chambers at the close of this chapter there are 
many examples of errors due to euphonic analogy. 



144 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Meanings 
of special- 
ized terms 
are deter- 
mined in 
part by 
general at- 
titudes. 



will be the main factor in determining the significance of 
the special term. 

In some such manner new words tend to coalesce with 
the known words that are most nearly related to them 
in form. It thus happens that families of words that 
denote a common general attitude, but each its own par- 
ticularization thereupon, are learned in part through 
the first word of the group learned, whether or not it be 
logically fundamental. The child early learns lovely; 
then loving, love, loveVy loveliness, lovable are, in the 
course of development, interpreted and used with 
it as a foundation, so to say. It is not necessary 
that the novice should understand the precise significa- 
tion of ing, linesSj able, in order that he should pro- 
ceed with his interpretation; he will make a tentative 
interpretation anyway, just as he makes a tentative trial 
with his new words, to see what the effect will be. 
The child does not demand explicit content for all ver- 
bal forms; if he gets a general image or attitude, any- 
thing for him to work on, he will not hesitate in his 
reactions. If children who have passed through their third 
readers, say, be given interesting books to read sponta- 
neously, they will spend hours over them, even though they 
cannot make out definitely and fully many of the words. 
So one may read to children and use unfamiliar terms fre- 
quently, but still they will be eager for him to continue if 
they are only interpreting enough of his lanugage to feel 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I45 

the trend of meaning. Of course, in the process of develop- 
ment, as the particularizing tendency becomes ever more 
marked, and adjustment to situations must become more 
and more precise, the pupil will realize the need of com- 
prehending every term he hears or reads; but even so, it is 
probable that this understanding does not, as a rule, attain 
to the abstractness and completeness of a dictionary defini- 
tion, say. 

I have tested children upon many definitions of terms 
which they could interpret quite effectively as they occurred 
in the ordinary contextual relations of speech and reading; 
but they could not satisfy any dictionary maker in their 
responses. H., at five, says of lovely, as a typical term, "it 
is something you like; flowers are lovely." At nine she 
says: " lovely means that a thing will give you pleasure "; 
or "it is something you love "; or " it is something nice 
and sweet and good." Asked to give examples of lovely 
objects, she names very readily a dozen, — her baby sister, 
her doll, the new-fallen snow, her new story-book, — all 
objects which give her pleasure in her relations with them. 
There is not yet much appreciation of lovely as referring to 
spiritual and moral qualities except they be expressed very 
concretely; and yet the term is not confined so completely 
to physical reference as it was at four. There is a constant 
movement toward the dictionary conception; but as this 
latter is formed by men who have attained to the highest 
point of mental development reached by the age in which 



146 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

they live,* it is probable that the majority of persons will 
always fall short of it. 

5. Meaning as felt before it becomes Definitive 

The child's In this connection it should be noted that the meaning of 

but I can- ^ term is felt in a general way earlier than it can be ex- 

is°often " plicitly defined. I ask H., at seven, to define loveliness. 

psychoiogi- j ^^^^ ^g|| from her response when the term is used in con- 

cally true. ^ 

versation or reading that she understands it in its fimda- 
mental reference, at any rate, and she can use it quite 
effectively; but she cannot state formally just what mean- 
ing it has for her. " I know, but I cannot tell," she says ; 
the precise idea denoted by this term has not become 
sufficiently differentiated from the general content of which 
it is an element so that the novice possesses it as an indi- 
vidual thing. If I press H. for some statement about 
loveliness, she will fall back upon the simpler term lovely^ — 
" when a thing is lovely, it has loveliness." Children who 
try to define new words, as H. does " loveliness," usually 
make very hard work of it, unless they have learned memor- 
iter a ready-made definition; and they feel they know 
better and more fully than they are able to tell. The old 
dogma that what a learner knows he can explicitly define 
is far from true. 
This characteristic of a child's language is seen in much of 

^ This statement does not mean that dictionary makers are distin- 
guished above all others for their mental caliber; but only that they 
record the usage of the most intellectual people. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I47 

his linguistic activity. His expression is in considerable 
part indefinite, non-precise. Seated at the dining table, 
and recalling that he would like to get a certain object 
from one of the stores in the city, he may say, " I wish 
you would get me that thing down there^^ when there has 
not been any suggestion in the preceding talk to indicate 
what special thing is desired, or where it can be found. 
Suppose you say, "But what thing do you mean?'* 
You may get this response : ** That thing that turns around, 
don't you know? That man we met the other day had 
one." And you may have to follow on for several minutes 
before you can bring the speaker's expression to the spe- 
cific object and place he is trying to designate. The speech 
of children from four or so onward for a few years is marked 
by these general expressions that must be in part the result 
of non-specialized and perhaps non-localized imaging. 
The novice seems as a rule to feel new situations in a gen- 
eral, undifferentiated manner, and only after much particu- 
lar experience can he image special elements of these 
situations. However, the child unquestionably sometimes 
falls back upon that thing, that man, that stuff, down there, 
etc., because he lacks the precise terms to denote the exact 
thing or location, even though it is specific in his imagery. 
As development proceeds, these indefinite expressions are 
heard less and less frequently in ordinary discussion, though 
it has been my experience that they reappear when the 
pupil begins a new study, as physical geography, say. 



148 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

That thing we studied about yesterday, that place we men- 
tioned, and the like, are expressions that are called into 
service frequently by the novice in any study, but they 
gradually disappear as he becomes more familiar with the 
particular field being explored. 

In illustration of the principles developed in this sec- 
tion mainly (though some of the principles developed 
in preceding sections are involved), it may be of interest 
and profit to quote at considerable length from studies 
made by Barnes ^ and Chambers * upon the content of 
familiar words. Barnes presents us with a detailed study 
of fifteen hundred answers gained from Boston and 
London school children to the question. What do you 
mean by the word " armor " ? The answers may be 
given without further comment than the author makes. 
In discussing the results, he says: — 

Not many of the children in American schools have ever 
seen armor, and yet there would be few if any children nine years 
old who would not have met the word in reading; and nearly 
all must have had pictures before them in which armor was rep- 
resented. It is a concrete and picturesque thing, with a special 
interest for children; it can be easily described and easily 
taught through pictiures; and since children's knowledge of it 
would not be apt to come through every-day life, it is a good 
word with which to test the way in which formal education gives 
content to words. 

In analyzing the children's answers, we find they fall into 
two groups, those showing a negative content and those show- 
» Op. cU., pp. 47-53. 2 Op. cit., p. 33. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I49 

ing a positive content. Those showing negative content are 
blank, or else are absolutely wrong; those having a positive 
content are more or less vaguely right, or they rise to correct 
knowledge and declare that armor is something worn, generally 
made of metal, and intended for protection. 

The papers that came back blank, or simply inscribed "I 
do not know," represent the children who have no available 
content for the word. Twenty-three per cent of the papers, 
19 per cent of the boys' papers, and 27 per cent of the girls', are 
in the "no answer" group. Armor is a boy's term, and the 
boys know more about it, age for age, than the girls do. Ar- 
ranged by ages, the proportion of those who have no knowledge 
which we can reach by this test runs : — 

Ages: 7 Yrs. 8 Yrs. 9 Yrs. 10 Yrs. ii Yrs. 12 Yrs. 13 Yrs. 14 Yrs. 

Boys: — 34% 21% 18% 11% 12% 14% 11% 
Girls: 40% 31% 38% 27% 34% 16% 23% 21% 

Thus we see that the number of those who have no content 
for the word vanishes with a fair degree of steadiness as the 
children grow older; but at fourteen there are still 21 per cent 
of the girls who have no content for the word. 

By a wrong answer, for the purposes of this study, we mean 
one absolutely wrong, into which no correct element enters; 
an incomplete answer is not counted wrong ; neither is one that 
contains error, if it contains any germ of truth. One-fifth of 
the girls and one-third of the boys at eight years old have a 
wrong content for armor; but by the time the children are 
fourteen, only two in one hundred have a wrong content. The 
proportions for the years are : — 

Ages: 7 Yrs. 8 Yrs. 9 Yrs. 10 Yrs. ii Yrs. la Yrs. 13 Yrs. 14 Yrs. 

Boys: — 34% 15% 12% 6% 4% 2% 2% 
Girls: 28% 18% 18% 17% s% 7% 2% 2% 



150 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

A Study of these absolutely wrong answers is in many ways 
instructive. One group is evidently derived from euphonic 
analogy. Thus "Armor" is to hold a thing by your arm; 
"means your arm more;'^ "armor is arm;" "title given to 
Arabic rulers" (Ameer); "is a river" (Amoor); "man that 
tends an armery;" "an ancor;" "a man that plays the ogan." 
One cannot be positive that he has rightly interpreted the child's 
meaning in these cases, but the errors are evidently due to eu- 
phonic analogy. Note that the word misapplied is very often 
misspelled: "ancor," "ogan," "armery." The hazy sense of 
the true form of the word leads easily to such substitution. 

In America several of these mistakes come through asso- 
ciation with the armories so common in our larger towns and so 
often used for public meetings. Thus we have several who say : 
"armor is music;" "a place where you see pickers;" "a safe 
place;" "a kind of band;" "where men work." The well- 
known Chicago meat packing-house leads several to say, "It 
is a man's name ; " "a company that packs;" "a kind of beef;" 
"a beef company." 

A considerable group of mistakes seems due to a dim asso- 
ciation of the word with stories of heroes, where the quali- 
ties of the wearer have passed over to the armor. Thus the 
papers say: "armor is brave;" "strong; " "a brave sailor;" 
"strength;" "protector;" "a true man;" "a prince that 
takes care of a nation;" "a ruler;" "a defender;" "a knight." 

The idea that it is some sort of clothing is very common. 
About 5 per cent give this meaning alone. It takes many 
forms "a plain suit;" "a sort of badge;" "a grand dress;" 
"a belt that a soldier wears;" "some kind of uniform;" 
"a kind of sparkling ornament that shines like gold." It 
may be said that it is unwise to class these last two groups 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 151 

as entirely wrong since they contain some rudimentary truth. 
They are certainly on the dividing line, and they might be 
put either with the vaguely right or with the wrong answers. 

The fact that at eight, twenty-five children out of a hundred 
give a wrong meaning to the word, while at fourteen but two 
in a hundred do so, is not alone due to the fact that at fourteen 
more of the children know about armor than at eight, but it also 
marks a changed mental attitude; the child at eight lives in a 
haze of undetermined meanings; at fourteen the horizon has 
cleared enough so that when he does not know he does not 
guess. 

If we next consider those definitions that have some right 
content, or are wholly right, we find them developing as fol- 
lows : — 

Ages: 7 yrs. 8 yrs. 9 yrs. 10 yrs. ii yrs. 12 trs. 13 yrs. 14 yks. 

Boys: - 32% 64% 70% 83% 84% 84% 87% 
Girls: 32% 51% 44% 56% 61% 77% 75% 77% 

This is a steadily growing strand of tendency; but when we 
analyze the answers carefully we find that nearly half these 
children who are in some degree right do not get beyond a vague 
association of the word "armor" with war, armies, soldiers, or 
protection. The percentage of children who have some part 
of the content right, but have not yet a full content for the word, 
is: — 

Ages: 7 yrs. 8 yrs. 9 yrs. 10 yrs. ii yrs. la yrs. 13 yrs. 14 yrs. 



Boys: 


- 22% 36% 38% 38% 28% 31% 


15% 


Girls: 


32% 47% 33% 43% 40% 31% 31% 


28% 



This line is least regular in its development of any we have 
had, because the answers it represents are on the border of in- 
telligence, and while some children pass each year from it to 



152 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

correct knowledge, others crowd in from the fields of no knowl- 
edge and wrong knowledge. The content in this group grows 
through every form of associated half knowledge. We saw it 
beginning in attributes and clothes. In the present group of 
answers it is sometimes almost as vague: ''When I hear the 
word armor I think of the soldiers," says a boy of nine. Other 
examples are: "It means to armor when you fight;" "an 
armor is a man who is armed with things;" "it is about war;" 
"the saddle of a horse in war to protect the body;" "I think 
the word armor means cartridge;" "one who uses arms when 
shooting;" "it means your breast;" "a kind of sheath;" 
"a band of steel;" "something that soldiers put their food 
in;" "a large army of men;" "a number of soldiers;" "a 
little boy who soldiers;" "a defender of blows;" "a body of 
iron;" "stuff that they use in battle." 

From these distant wanderings in the world of the true, the 
child comes nearer to the heart of things. "A man that has a 
brass plate to protect him is called an armor;" "a large sheet 
of steel put over the body;" "a kind of mineral which soldiers 
ware when they go to war;" "it is something like a shield all 
over you;" "it is war clothes;" " it is what you are in ; " "a 
man with iron all over him;" "a man who puts iron all over 
himself as the knights did in olden times." These last answers 
are all very close to the truth, and some of them seem adequate. 
If we take as a full definition for our purpose a statement that 
armor is something worn for protection, the following table 
shows the percentages of American children at each age who 
have a correct content for the term : — 

Ages: 7 yrs. 8 yrs. 9 yks. 10 yhs. ii yks, 12 yrs. 13 yxs. 14 yrs. 

Boys: — io% 28% 32% 45% 56% 53% 7^% 
Girls: — 4% 11% 13% 21% 46% 44% 49% 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 1 53 

On the whole, American children have a better working con- 
tent for this set of words than have the children in the London 
Board Schools; but with the word '^armour" the London chil- 
dren are decidedly better than ours. The comparison, on the 
four lines examined, gives the following results : — 



No Answers 

Ages: 7 yrs. 8 yrs. 9 yrs. 10 yrs. ii vrs. 12 yes. 13 yrs. 14 yrs. 

America: 40% 33% 3°% 23% 23% 14% 19% 16% 

London: — 33% 23% 9% 1% 1% 1% — 



Wrong Answers 

Ages: 7 yrs. 8 yrs. 9 yks. 10 yrs. h yrs. 12 yrs. 13 yrs. 14 yrs. 

7o 15% 6% s% 2% 2% 

7o 7% 1% - 1% - 



America: 28% 24% i; 
London: — 5% 



Vaguely Right 

Ages: 7 yrs. 8 yrs. 9 yrs. 10 yrs. ii yrs. 12 yrs. 13 yrs. 14 yrs. 

America: 32% 35% 35% 40% 39% 30% 31% 21% 

London: — 45% 42% 35% 36% 33% 30% — 



Ages: 

America : — 
London : — 



Correct 

7 yrs. 8 YRS. 9 YRS. 10 YRS. II YRS. 12 YRS. 13 YRS. 14 YRS. 

- 7% 20% 2z% ZZ% 51% 48% 60% 

16% 26% 48% 61% 64% 68% — 



The general law of development is the same in the two coun- 
tries ; but the London child lives in an old historic atmosphere, 
surrounded with museums and shop windows full of armor, 
and constantly seeing pictures of the national heroes in coats 
of mail. The comparison well illustrates the power of environ- 
ment; that is, of education, to hasten the growth of content. 



154 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

This is all that education can ever do ; it can never give a full 
and correct English vocabulary to eight-year-old children; 
it can simply hasten growth. The comparison also illustrates 
the well-known but sometimes forgotten fact, that even in per- 
fecting a vocabulary the school is but one of the educational 
influences at work on the children. A boy is being educated 
in language on the street or in his home as truly as when in 
school. 

Such studies as this often throw light, incidentally, on sub- 
jects outside the immediate investigation. Thus we were 
interested in recording the number of writers who associated 
armor with past time, as it throws a little Hght on the rise of 
the historic sense and interest. The percentages for the Lon- 
don children run : — 



Boys: 


5% 


6% 


17% 


11% 


22% 


24% 


Girls: 


1% 




6% 


17% 


25% 


27% 



The references seldom go beyond saying, "It is an iron coat 
worn long ago;" though a few say "worn in the time of King 
Alfred the Great;" "such as King David had;" or, "a steel 
coat used by knights of long ago." These rudimentary historic 
interests hardly exist with the little children, but become im- 
portant after ten or eleven. 

Chambers,^ studying the ways in which words get 
content, asked his pupils the following questions: — 

1. What do you mean by the word ''monk^^ ? 

2. What do you mean by the word "peasant ".? 

3. What do you mean by the word " emperor ^^ ? 

4. What do you mean by the word " armor ^^? 

* "How Words get Meaning," Fed. Sent., March, 1904, Vol. XI, 
No. I, pp. 34-37. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 1 55 

5. What do you mean by the word "nation^* ? 

6. What do you mean by the word "school"? 

Note, in the answers which follow, the play of suggestion 
and the lack of definiteness and particularization in the 
responses of the younger children. As we move onward, 
however, answers show more precision in thinking, and 
a growing tendency, as development proceeds, to mention 
the essential characteristics in describing an object. 

Paper 3. Foreign, boy, age 8. 

1. The word " monk " means monkey. 

2. The word " peasant " means pleasant. 

3. The word " emperor " means empty. 

4. The word " armor " means army. 

5. The word " nation " means nature. 

6. The word " school" means to learn. 

Paper 5. American, girl, age 8. 

1. A monk is a person who live by himselves up on high 

moimtains and had large dogs that go out and find 
travellers in the snow. 

2. A "peasant" is a person who is poor. 

3. An "emperor" is a kind of King. 

4. An "armor" is a thing you wear in war to shield you. 

5. A "nation" is a whole lot of states together. 

6. "School" is where you go to learn Arithmetic, Spelling, 

Geography, Language. 

Paper 6. American, boy, age 9. 

1. A monk is a little animal that look like a squiril. 

2. Peasant is a poor farmer. 

3. An emperor is a rich man. 

4. An armor is a sword and everything a soldier needs to 

gard themself. 

5. Nation is when a coimtry is free from another country. 

6. A school is a house wher children go and to read and 

write. 



156 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Paper 8. Foreign, girl, age 10. 

1. The word monk means a animal that lives in trees. 

2. The word peasant means 

3. The word emperor means a ruler. 

4. The word armor means a suit and things that you use in 

war. 

5. The word nation means a state. 

6. The word school means a place to sent children to lear 

Arithmetic and other steaties. 

Paper 10. Foreign, boy, age 12. 

1. Monk is a religious sect or person who lives in a monastery 

and appears to be religious. 

2. A peasant is one of the lowest class of people or poorest in 

wealth who till the soil in Europe. 

3. An emperor is a person who rules or oversees a body of 

people and attends to their business. 

4. An armor is a coat of mail worn by the people of olden 

times who used it to protect them. It covered them all 
over. 

5. A nation is a body of people living in one separate country 

under one government. 

6. School is a place or house where children, men or women 

are educated or taught. 

Paper 11. Foreign, boy, age 14. 

1. The word "monk" means to me that it is the name of 

man who has made a vow for a certain time to Hve a 
devoted and quiet life in a monastery. 

2. The word "peasant" means to me that it is the name of 

a poor class of people in the southern part of Europe. 
They are very good fighters when in war but they do 
not try to fight on an open field but try to steal marches 
on their enimy and take them by surprise in the night. 

3. The word "emperor" means to me that it is the name 

of a ruler of two nations — Germany and Austria Hungary. 

4. The word "armor" means to me that it is the name of all 

the weapons that a soldier or sailor needs to defend 
himself with. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS I57 

5. The word "nation'* means to me that it is the name of a 

country recognized by the rest of the world as a strong 
nation. 

6. The word "school" means to me that it is a place or 

building private or public — It is a place for learning 
something. 

Paper 12. American, girl, age 14. 

1. A "monk "is a man who lives secluded from the rest 

of the world and devotes his life to Christian work. 

2. " Peasant " is an English word which means farmer or 

those residing in the country. 

3. An "emperor" is a ruler. He generally rules a limited 

monarchy. 

4. "Armor" is a steel coat or suit worn by men in olden 

times to protect them when in battle from the weap- 
ons of the enemy. 

5. A "nation" is a body of people grouped together under 

one head, and obeying rules laid down by this head or 
by itself. 

6. A "school" is a number of pupils gathered together for the 

purpose of receiving instruction which is given by a 
teacher. 

Paper 14. American, boy, age 18. 

1. A "monk" is a type of the human race that lived in the 

Dark Ages. These monks were very learned, and from 
them much of our learning to-day has been handed 
down. 

2. A "peasant" is an example of the poorest class of people in 

many countries of Europe. These peasants live very 
humbly and most of their clothes they weave themselves. 

3. An "emperor" is a man, who by birth, reigns over an 

absolute monarchy. 

4. "Armor" has several meanings. One of the old suit 

of armor worn by the old Normal soldiers when they 
conquered Britain. Another is a battleship of the 
present era being covered with thick plates of iron 
and steel to protect it from injury from projectiles 
fired at it by other vessels. 



158 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

5. A "nation" comprises many states or provinces brought 

together under one government. 

6. A "school" is an institution for the purpose of educating 

children and grown people as well. 



Difficulties 
with words 
descriptive 
of time re- 
lations. 



6. Some Special Difficulties in Meaning 

Before closing this chapter, attention may be called to 
a few of the special difficulties which the child encounters 
in getting at our meanings, and in using words with the 
significations which we attach to them. Words descrip- 
tive of time relations are the source of many linguistic 
struggles and mishaps. S., at four, says, this night (to- 
day, or perhaps this afternoon, or perhaps the night 
following this day, — the next night we come to) ; the 
last day (some day in the past, not this day) ; in August 
he said. Yesterday we went to the University across the 
ice (last winter when the ice was on the lake). To- 
morrow, next week or month or year all get sadly mixed in 
the learner's speech. V., coming to tell me the dinner 
chimes were rung some minutes since, utters a dozen uh''s 
trying to get started on the proper expression, when he 
finally delivers himself of this : " It is ajter when the chimes 
have rung." Again, wishing to say that earlier in the 
day he had performed some noteworthy deed, he says, 
" When it wasn't this time," etc. So one might recite 
at pleasure instances illustrating the trouble the child 
has in trying to express time relations in conventional 
phraseology. He finds it about as difficult a task to 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS 1 59 

understand what we mean by "to-morrow," "next week," 
"yesterday," etc. Children are incessantly plying their 
elders with the questions, "When is to-night? " "When 
will it be to-morrow? " "next week? " etc. " When was 
yesterday?" "How long will it be before to-night?" 
etc. The terms " second," " minute," " hour " are used 
at the outset with no appreciation of their precise signifi- 
cance; the child simply understands in a general way that 
these terms denote the passage of time, but he is just as 
likely as not to speak of his having jumped his rope right 
along without stopping for a hundred hours. 

It would make a long story to tell in detail just how 
these terms come to be understood and used with pre- 
cision; but the method has already been indicated in 
principle. With increasing experience the child slowly 
works out a temporal scheme or pattern in which time 
relations are ever more clearly discerned. Then, as he 
employs terms which he has picked up from those about 
him to denote these time relations, the socius by his 
reactions enables the novice to tell whether or not he is 
using his terms according to the prevailing custom. And 
when he begins to appreciate the necessity of using his 
terms precisely, he learns effectively through imitation, 
reading, and the dictionary. 

Expressions of space relations are sometimes used to 
designate time relations. S., at four and a half, says, 
" I drank my milk in front of my dessert; " "I played out 



l6o LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Difficulties 
with par- 
ticular 
construc- 
tions. 



on the street in front of the kindergarten time; " "So 
I went in behind all the others" {after all the others were 
in); "It is pretty near noon," etc. It is probable that 
the simpler temporal relations of the character indicated 
may be easily transformed by the child into spatial rela- 
tions, especially when his notions cannot find a ready 
outlet through temporal terms. 

Finally, we may glance at some of the learner's diffi- 
culties in using certain common terms with their con- 
ventional significations. The novice always has trouble 
with his than constructions; or, nor, as, suit him better 
than the former term. " I am taller as you; " " H. has 
more candy nor me; " "Max can run faster or any of us," 
— these are typical constructions of the child just enter- 
ing upon the use of sentences involving the comparison 
usually expressed by than. Again, the either and neither 
constructions perplex the young linguist a good deal. 
He will resort to a variety of linguistic devices to avoid 
them; and of course he can get on quite comfortably 
without them. Suppose he wishes to express a notion 
which would be handled by an adult in this way : — 
^^ Neither you nor Mamma (or more briefly, neither of you) 
must look until I am through; " the beginner will say, 
"Mamma not look. Papa not look, imtil I am through." 
Then when he gains a Httle greater facility he may make 
an effort at synthesis and brevity, and he will say, pos- 
sibly, ''Bothoi you must not look," etc., or " don't one " 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR VERBAL SYMBOLS l6l 

or " any one of you look," etc. Later he may use some- 
thing like this: ^'Either one of you must not look," etc. 
^'Neither of you " is the culminating point in the evolu- 
tion of this particular expression. 

The as if and as though constructions give trouble at 
the outset. Like is used very generally in their stead. 
"He walks like he was lame," "My tooth feels like it 
was loose," "It feels like it was summer," are typical 
illustrations of these constructions. 

7. Summary 

1. The child is the heir of all the ages of linguistic evolu- 
tion, but his heritage is of the nature of social, not of physical, 
heredity. 

2. The content of any word, as "virtue," differs to a 
greater or less extent in different minds, though there is a 
general and basal meaning which it has for all persons who have 
any knowledge of it. 

3. The child assigns special, concrete meaning to many 
abstract symbols he sees or hears, if he reacts upon them at all. 
Or else their significance is felt in only a very general way. 

4. Concrete terms commonly have too broad extent; and 
again they may in some cases be too narrowly limited in extent. 

5. With the novice, it is probable that his mental processes 
and his linguistic ability do not develop precisely parallel. But 
with development, the character of the individual's expression 
becomes a more faithful index of his thought. 

6. The reaction of the alter is one of the most potent fac- 
tors in bringing the child's interpretation and employment 



1 62 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of symbols into accord with the usage in his community. There 
is a process of social selection in linguistic evolution somewhat 
like natural selection in biological evolution. 

7. The child's vocabulary resembles a growing organism. 
At any moment there may be found in it words, phrases, and 
expressions well-nigh matured, while other words, phrases, and 
expressions may be in all stages of immaturity. 

8. The general principle of apperception — the assimila- 
tion of new by the nearest related familiar experience — applies 
fully to linguistic evolution. 

9. Terms having particularized meaning are interpreted 
in part through the general attitudes aroused by the general 
element of the particularized term. 

10. Meanings of abstract terms are felt before they become 
definitive. The child who says, "I know, but I cannot tell," 
is often stating a truth. 

11. All the child's expression relating to new experience is 
indefinite, non-precise, showing that he is feeling a general, 
undifferentiated situation, and not imaging some particular 
element thereof. 

12. The novice has special difficulty with the meanings of 
words descriptive of time relations, and with the use of the 
neither, nor, and similar constructions. 



PART II 

REFLECTIVE PROCESSES IN LINGUISTIC 
DEVELOPMENT 

CHAPTER VII 

ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 

I. The Attitude of the Novice toward Reading 

At the outset we may take note of the peculiar charac- Visual ver- 
bal forms 
ter of the situation which the pupil faces when he begins have little 

his attack upon the art of arts. Up until this point the nificancf" 

objects he has seen in the world about him have probably ^^^L 

all had concrete meaning for him, because they have *°'*^® 

<=> ' J novice. 

affected him in some direct, vital way, or he has made 
use of them in carrying forward his active enterprises. 
For this reason he has had every incentive to give his 
attention to these real objects, in order that he might 
get to understand and always to recognize them when- 
ever he encoimtered them, so that he could adjust him- 
self properly to them. When compared with verbal 
symbols, these concrete things have, taken as a whole, 
possessed in a striking way peculiarities of visual, auditory, 

163 



164 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

or dermal experience which have made their individuali- 
ties, so to say, easily recognizable. It is appreciated, of 
course, that the child will not in the beginning distinguish 
a cat from a puppy, for instance, or his father from his 
mother; but yet these different objects influence him in 
quite distinctive ways, and very early he is impelled to 
attend to each critically, so that he may foretell what he 
will receive from it or how he may use it. This leads 
rapidly to ever more acute discrimination of these real 
things; and while in the large and on first contact, as 
already intimated, a kitten and a puppy appear identi- 
cal, still each possesses certain characteristics which the 
eye, the ear, and the skin of the learner, made keen by 
need, come quite readily to detect. 

But see what a different situation the novice meets 
when he begins his reading. He is confronted by verbal 
forms that are practically identical, so far as his eye is 
concerned. A word when first met is just a group of 
lines, or marks, probably, — hazy, undefined, character- 
less. These verbal forms have no individuality, either as 
forms or as symbols of meaning. The child has had no 
vital experiences which should incline him to study these 
forms critically; and even if he did attempt to examine 
them, they are relatively devoid of marks that his atten- 
tion, which has been engrossed with moving, dynamic 
objects presenting varied color combinations, could 
seize upon. The elements of words, the letters, are stiU 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 165 

less distinguishable, if possible, because they have still 
less individuality. The six-year-old has been practised 
only in distinguishing objects in the world of concrete, 
sense realities; and in consequence he is wholly unprac- 
tised in noting the essential characteristics of verbal 
forms as conventional symbols of these realities. Observe 
a child of five, say, who has had no training in reading, 
and see how difficult, if not impossible, it is for him to 
attend to mere verbal situations of a visual nature. 

The child comes to this new class of objects without interest in 
any sense of what he ought to look for in learning them, not native 
For him, these verbal forms lack vitality and significance ^hiid* 
altogether, and there is little if any value to be derived 
from mastering them. In reality, words are devoid of 
individuality even to the adult until they acquire mean- 
ing as symbols, except in the case of the philologist who 
is interested in their history or phonetic character; but 
even the latter acquires his interest late in his develop- 
ment. So why should the child be concerned with words 
if they have not affected him in any obvious way, or if 
they cannot be used to secure goods of importance? Of 
course, if he has gained the notion, more or less clearly, 
that these symbols are the instruments by the aid of 
which he can make out the stories in his books which 
now he must depend upon others to make out for him, 
this will be an incentive for him to give his attention to 
them; but this appreciation must be exceedingly slight 



1 66 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

in the case of a six-year-old who does not even " know 
his letters." Writers are in the habit of likening the 
child to an adult beginning a foreign language ; but really 
there is a great difference between them, for the adult, 
having acquired one language, has the basis in experience 
for estimating the value of acquiring another language, 
while the child is lacking in this respect. It may be 
suggestive to mention in this connection that if a child 
of six or seven be given freedom, he will not normally 
take to reading, but will choose hand activities, construc- 
tive exercises, and games and plays.^ Dewey ,^ Patrick,^ 
Oppenheim,* and others have recently emphasized this 
point, and it is becoming a matter of current belief among 
observing teachers. However, there appear to be certain 
exceptions to this principle. We are told of men Uke 
Franklin and Mill who had great love for reading as early 
as three, even; and one sometimes hears of children who 
cannot be kept from their books at the age of five or six. 
This is not to say, though, that even these children would 
spontaneously choose reading above all other activities, 

* In Part I of my " Dynamic Factors in Education " I have worked out 
this conception in some detail. 

2 See his "The Primary School Fetisch," Forum, Vol. 25, p. 285. He 
has expressed his opinion also in a nimiber of articles in the early volumes 
of the " Elementary School Teacher." 

3 a Should Children under Ten Years learn to Read and Write ? " Pop. 
Sci. Mo., Vol. 54, pp. 382-392. 

< "The Development of the Child," especially Chap. V. 



ACQUISITION OF WORD- IDEAS IN READING 167 

for they may have little else to occupy their attention, 
and they turn to this activity as a dernier resort. We 
have no evidence to show that if the child were given an 
environment rich in opportunities for motor activities 
he would of his own accord leave his playfellows and all 
his concrete enterprises and devote himself to his primer. 
We really have much evidence indicating that the con- 
trary is true. 

It is not implied in what has been said that the 
child never becomes interested in reading so that he will 
sacrifice all his other interests for it. One who lives with 
children from eight on often sees them hurry their morn- 
ing toilet and their breakfast, and tarry in the library at 
bedtime, so that they may have as many minutes as pos- 
sible with their books. Reading is the consuming pas- 
sion of H. at nine, so that special effort must be made to 
keep her interested in other activities; and this is true 
in principle of a number of H.'s companions, who have 
learned reading as an art, or rather as a means, and who 
have free access to books within their sphere of compre- 
hension and interest. But note that H. is interested, 
not in words as mere forms, but only in their meaning; 
in the situations which they now portray for her. If she 
takes up a book in which the mere words require much 
attention, as is the case sometimes in her school reading, 
she soon tires of it. She is no more interested now in 
the technique of visual language than she was at six 



1 68 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

when she was first introduced to the art, and when verbal 
forms meant nothing to her/ 

2. Initial Processes in mastering Reading 

Language- The problem of how to arouse the young child^s interest 

unities in 

reading. in verbal technique, or at least how to secure his attention 
thereto, will' receive our consideration presently; a more 
general matter must occupy us for a time here. The task 
we must accomplish in teaching the child reading is, of 
course, a very complicated one. We must for one thing 
lead him to such a knowledge of the several language- 
unities that they can be recognized and used separately 
when occasion requires; and at the same time he must 
attain such facility in the employment of the larger units 
that the elements of which they are constituted will, in 
these connections, lose their individuality, and function 
only marginally as factors and not as independent units. 
The farther development proceeds the larger the imits 
that must be dealt with as wholes, the lower units fusing 
together and forfeiting their separate existences. When 

* Sometimes children before they have begun reading show some inter- 
est in the words they see on billboards, stores, etc., and they inquire what 
they signify. But it has been my experience that these words always 
possess unusual characteristics in size, form, color, material of which they 
are made, or the like, and these, and not the verbal characteristics pure 
and simple, claim attention. Eliminate these peculiarities, so that you 
have nothing but symbolic values left, and the novice will probably pass 
the words without noting them. 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 169 

the child begins reading, he certainly does not distinguish 
focally the elementary sounds in the words he hears, and 
it is probable that the average child of five does not focal- 
ize the separate words of the sentences spoken in his pres- 
ence. A sentence is to him simply a unified complex of 
sounds that mean something as a whole. Doubtless by 
the age of five the child knows individual auditory words, 
for if you speak a sentence slowly and ask him to tell the 
words, say the names of the objects mentioned, or what 
you have been talking about, he can do it. And still in 
his reaction the sentence is a unity to him ; and it has 
become so through the gradual integration of its elements 
as he has reacted upon or used it in his daily adjustments. 
While he began with word-units, every step forward has 
tended toward the integration of these into higher units; 
and the original independence is largely lost, as the lower 
units actually function in daily linguistic experience. 
However, if one substitutes a strange synonym for a 
familiar term in a sentence which is ordinarily handled as 
a unity, he may prevent such reaction, and compel atten- 
tion to the new element until it becomes fitted into the 
sentential pattern. I say to my children one morning, 
just to see what will happen, " It's going to be a re- 
splendent day." They all halt at the novel word, and 
make haste to find out what it means. Afterward I may 
hear them practising on it so as to work it into the sen- 
tence, and get their tongues and ears fashioned to it. We 



170 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Visual per- 
ception 
of verbal 
forms pecul- 
iarly dif- 
ficult. 



The ex- 
ploitation 
of literal 
forms. 



are touching here upon a fundamental principle in lin- 
guistic evolution, — the establishment of sentence pat- 
terns, and the introduction of new designs into these 
patterns, — the treatment of which will be given in greater 
detail in later discussion. 

There is a peculiar difficulty which the child encounters 
in his perception of visual verbal forms, and to which 
reference has already been made. Before he attacks 
reading, his visual experiences have been mainly concerned 
with objects in which color has been a prominent charac- 
teristic. It is probable that static forms lacking pro- 
nounced color values attract relatively little attention 
from the young. In the visual exploitation of most 
objects the child^s eye sweeps from one prominent color 
area to another; and in the case of objects in which these 
areas are not quite clearly marked, the learner will have 
trouble in establishing their individuality. Observe a 
child of two years, say, in reacting upon the objects about 
him. The " dull," " sombre," unvarying objects in re- 
spect to color values are ignored, while those of oppo- 
site characteristics monopoHze the attention. 

One may observe teachers who still teach reading by 
the alphabetic method resorting to various devices to get 
their children to exploit the letters. For one thing, they 
trace the letters " in the air " or on the board, while the 
learner attends as best he can to the process. Theoreti- 
cally his eye will follow the tracing, and in consequence 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 171 

there will be established certain motor patterns or se- 
quences which will constitute the principal data for the 
recognition of the letter. Doubtless what actually occurs 
in this tracing, if repeated, is that the eye of the nov- 
ice gradually becomes habituated in the exploitation of 
literal forms in an appropriate manner. Tell a child of 
three to " look at this letter," and what happens? He 
gains just a general, obscure impression of the thing as 
a whole. He is not focally aware of its being composed of 
elements, each bearing a dej&nite form and spatial rela- 
tion to the others; this awareness can come to him only 
when his attention is drawn upon the several parts by 
his attempting to construct them in the sequence in which 
they exist in the model. He can attend in a way to the 
elements while they are being made, but he is unable to 
exploit them effectively when they are presented in the 
completed whole, simply because he has had no experi- 
ence in focalizing elements in this sort of a unity. In the 
forms with which he has had to deal up to this point there 
has been no occasion for this special analytic process; 
his interests have in no way been promoted by it. 

The novice is required by some teachers to trace for 
himself the letter he is trying to learn. Theoretically 
the manual process yields valuable data for establishing 
the individuality of letters. As Professor Baldwin has 
pointed out in discussing Tracery Imitation,^ there are 

^ See his "Mental Development, Methods and Processes," pp. 86-103. 



172 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

three series of data involved in the production of a letter 
in this way: the ocular data, resulting from the eyes 
following the line; the retinal data, resulting from the 
retinal impression of the line traced; and the kinaesthetic 
data, derived from the motor processes required to execute 
the line. These data coalesce in a manner which need 
not be worked out here; but each plays a part in estab- 
lishing the individuaHty of verbal forms. It is doubtful 
if the visual data alone would be sufficient to differentiate 
these forms. Watch a child of six who has been set a 
task of learning letters by merely looking at them, and 
you will see him often trying to help himself by running 
over them with his finger. If he be given a pencil and 
paper, he will often spontaneously reproduce them in his 
crude way, and he will even model them in his sand pile.^ 
The verbal-motor-graphic tendency becomes marked in 
children who learn to read by reproducing words or letters. 
There seems to be a sort of urgency of visual verbal forms 
to become realized in motor process; and doubtless the 
execution reacts upon the image, defining it and rendering 
it secure and recognizable. We saw the same principle 
in operation in the disposition of auditory verbal images 

* Strieker, among others, attaches supreme importance to the motor 
elements in language ; these constitute the content or meaning-ideas of our 
verbal associations. See his " Sprachvorstellung," pp. 26-28 and 77-78. 
For a discussion of the general principle of dynamogenesis, or the motor 
expression of sensory and central processes, see the author's " Education 
as Adjustment," especially Chaps. V and X. 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 73 

to become realized in speech. Of course, it is with this 
as with most other modes of reaction in mental develop- 
ment, — as the reaction becomes facile, the tendency to 
perform it, except when immediate adjustment demands 
it, grows constantly less. 
In this connection it may be of interest to quote a pas- The motor 

<• TT 1 T 1 • <• • factor in 

sage from Huey ^ regardmg the prommence of motonza- gaining 
tion in linguistic activity in his own case: " I have been 
interested," he says, '' in noting the part which motoriza- 
tion seems to have in this higher knitting together of word- 
units into phrase- or sentence-units. The word, with 
myself at least, seems to be motorized as soon as singly 
presented, instantly when seen; and this motorization 
seems to help hold it in consciousness while it is combining 
with the other words into the higher unit, the phrase, 
which is then itself motorized (or in reading aloud is 
spoken) by one unitary effort. 

'' It is well known that in reading aloud the vocal utter- 
ance follows several words behind the eye's fixation point. 
It seems to me, also, that in silent reading there is a similar 
phrase motorization (or auditization, or both, as is most 
usual) following behind the eye, and ajter the perception 
and audito-motorizing of the single words. (This, of 
course, has reference to readers who motorize; and it 
seems difficult to find readers who do not, in a greater or 

^ " On the Psychology and Physiology of Reading," Amer. Jour, of 
Psych., Vol. XII, 1900-1901, p. 308. 



174 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

less degree.) The single- word motorization does not 
make so much noise in consciousness as the later and 
reinforced utterance as part of a phrase, but is truly there, 
to my introspection, at least." 
Historic The extreme difficulty of learning a letter in isolation 

schemes for . i i 

teaching the has been appreciated, by some teachers, at any rate, from 
^ ^ * ' the earliest times, and various systems have been origi- 
nated in the belief that they would economize time and 
effort. Hall ^ has touched upon the most interesting of 
these systems, and I can do no better than quote his sum- 
mary. He says that " many unique primer methods have 
been devised in Europe to modify or reform the spelling 
method, beginning as early as 1534 with Ickelsamer's 
device of placing the picture of an animal, its printed 
name, and the letter whose sound was most like the ani- 
mal's voice or cry, in parallel columns. Against the 
picture of a dog, e.g., was placed the * growling ' r ; 
against a bird, the twittering 2; with a lamb, a, etc. The 
children must analyze the words phonetically, and before 
they saw them, draw the sounds upon the board. The 
later, but more widely current, method of associating a 
with apple, b with boy, etc., was supplemented by utilizing 
the lingering final sound, and teaching b with tub, t with 
rate, etc. Another inter] ectional-imitative method, sug- 
gested by Neuman in 1832, and lately modified and psycho- 
logically defended by Oehlwein, places beside the letter m 
* See his " How to teach Reading " (Boston, 1901), p. 2 et seq. 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 75 

a COW just beginning to low; with r, a rapidly moving 
post- wagon and the winding of a clock are pictured; with 
a J SL crying baby and a crow; with Oj a faUing snow man, 
and the children exclaiming, Oh ! with /, a smith at his 
bellows, the sound of which the children may imitate; 
with schj children driving away hens, etc. By another 
method, red letters were printed on blackboard and slate, 
to be exactly covered by the children's chalk and pencil. 
In Basedow's great work (1774) describing the methods 
of his institution, reading, like everything else, was sugar 
coated and made play. In the pronunciation games, the 
children spoke the names of all the pleasant things they 
could think of, as apples, sugar, raisins, candy, nuts, etc. 
In the game of lettered cards the parent or teacher played, 
e.g. a; and if a letter that could be pronounced with it 
as a syllable, e.g. b, was played by the child, who said a&, 
it could, as a reward, bite an apple, see a picture, smell 
a flower, etc. In his school-bakery, sweet cakes, and 
even bread, were baked in the form of letters, and the 
most doltish child soon learned to call for a large ginger- 
bread w, instead of the small i, and usually graduated 
from an alphabet diet of four weeks as an accomplished 
a-b-c-darian. There were alphabet blocks, alphabet 
songs, dolls, pictures, rhymes, games, etc. By some of 
the philanthropinists, boys were taught w by twisting 
their bodies into something like its shape and crying woe; 
they personated / by dressing in helmet, big necktie, and 



176 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Stilts; or Sj by putting on an artificial hump and big belly, 
etc. Pestalozzi taught his classes to spell long Hsts of 
words by heart before they saw the letters; and then, 
showing the letters, had them combined in every way, 
somewhat after the fashion of ' the house that Jack 
built ^- while some of his fellows degenerated to exercises 
in pronouncing senseless combinations of forty or fifty 
letters each. A leading, though by no means the only, 
motive of these, and many other methods which might 
be cited, was to reduce the function of the letter-name, 
or defer it to a later stage in learning to read. Although 
the letter-name was once defended, because mechanical, 
the pedagogic rage against its chief use in spelling has 
run very high in Germany. Kehr says it has caused chil- 
dren ages of misery. Heinicke says it required thousands 
of superfluous associations, and that no child ever did 
reaUy learn to read by it ; but, when seeming to have done 
so, has in fact unconsciously translated names into phonic 
signs; that spelling is a child- torture greater than the 
Inquisition, etc. Some German writers asserted that 
most children did not need to learn to read, not for the 
reasons Rousseau said Emile need not read till fifteen, 
although he would if, or because, not forced to it at ten, 
but because between the greatly magnified hardship of 
old and the fantastic nature of new methods, ignorance 
seemed preferable. Jutting lately stated that no one, 
except an anonymous newspaper writer, had seriously 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 77 

defended spelling as a method of teaching reading for 
fifty years in Germany. It was forbidden by law in 
Prussia in 1872, and several states have since followed.'* 

3. Language-unities in teaching Reading 

Modern criticism of the alphabetic method has, it seems, WasteM- 
thoroughly established certain fundamental principles, alphabetic 
which may be mentioned here without argument. To 
begin with, the learning of the letter at the outset as a 
thing apart is wasteful and ineffective for at least two 
reasons. In the first place, it is to the novice entirely 
non-significant, and is so simple structurally, so lacking 
in distinctive features, so devoid of individuality, that it 
is unusually difficult for him to master it. There is little 
in it for his mental hooks to fasten on to, a fact empha- 
sized by Cattell's^ experiments, in which he showed that 
short words are read more easily than isolated letters. 
Then, in the second place, the letter, in order to be used 
most advantageously later on, must be learned at the 
outset as functional in larger unities, and not as standing 
by itself, and having independent value. The novice has 
made no progress toward the mastery of verbal forms 
as symbols of experiences when he has learned simply 
that a certain elementary form is called a. Indeed, he has 
probably lost ground, for the reason that when he comes 

^ See " Ueber die Zeit der Erkennung und Benennung," etc., Philo- 
sophische Studien, Vol. I. 
N 



178 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

to use it as functional in words and sentences he is handi- 
capped by tending to regard it as he originally formed 
acquaintance with it. This is not to say that he should 
never learn the letters by name; but it is important that 
his first dealing with them should concern their functional 
values, so that these may always be most prominent in 
linguistic reaction. A novice could never infer the oral 
form of any word, as cat, from the names of its elements, 
and there is surely not the sHghtest organic relation be- 
tween these elements and the significance of the word. 
It is impossible to establish vital relations with content 
as long as we deal with the isolated letter, which need 
not be the case when we make a beginning with the word 
or sentence. 

On the other side, there is a limit to the complexity of 
the forms which the children can economically attack at 
the outset. It is quite the fashion in some quarters to-day 
to start the child in his reading with the sentence. But 
from my own observations it seems likely that the sentence is 
not learned as a unit in the beginning. Some prominent 
word is seized upon, and the whole sentence is read out 
from it. Take this: "Hiawatha is an Indian boy";* 
the child will say off the whole sentence, because he has 

* I experimented with all my children on sentences of this character 
made from Florence Holbrook's " Hiawatha Primer." In every case I 
made greatest progress when I did not cling too closely to the sentences at 
the outset, as I show farther on. 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 79 

heard it spoken, and Hiawatha reinstates the whole, 
but was, an, and hoy, possibly also Indian, are missed 
completely so far as visual appreciation is concerned. 
They might just as well not be in there at all. The word 
Hiawatha, and possibly Indian, are all that become focal in 
the beginning, and so are the only words learned. I am 
assuming now that the sentence is treated as a unity, with- 
out giving prominence to each word. However, if the 
teacher presents the sentence as a series of independent 
elements, as, '' Hiawatha — is — an — Indian — boy,'' 
pointing to each word as she pronounces it, and requiring 
the child to do the same, then the separate words receive 
individual attention, and the conception of the sentence, as 
composed of individual words, becomes established. But 
more of this presently. 

The proposition, heard so frequently to-day, that the 
sentence is the unit of thought, and so the child should 
begin with it in reading, is of doubtful vaHdity, as it is 
ordinarily interpreted. It is doubtless true that the child's 
adjustment to any situation requires a mental construc- 
tion, which logically comprises the elements of the sen- 
tential pattern; but these elements are not all explicit in 
most of his adjustments. We should not forget that the 
child uses sentence-words to express his experiences long 
before he uses the differentiated sentence ; and while he has 
passed this period in oral expression before he comes to 
reading, nevertheless, when he essays the mastery of a new 



l8o LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Lower 
unities 
must be 
gained as 
functional 
in higher 
ones. 



language medium, he tends to fall back upon the word as 
the unit which is within his grasp, and which answers his 
needs fully. For instance, when he is looking at a picture 
of a horse in his reading-book, the single word " horse " 
will express the measure of his thought as completely as 
will the sentence, *'This is a horse" or "See the horse" 
or " Here is a horse." It is very probable that the child's 
interest when he begins his reading is not to " make sen- 
tences," but to discover what object a given word denotes. 
Perhaps it should be turned about, — he desires to find 
out what word will designate the object now before him. 
To achieve association between object and its simplest 
verbal symbol is the ambition of the novice. 

There can be no doubt that the learner ought very early 
to be got into the habit of handling the sentence as a imity, 
the word functioning merely as a factor therein. If the 
child becomes accustomed to dealing with the word as a 
thing apart, his progress in reading will surely be arrested. 
Just as rapidly as he can do so he should be urged on to 
larger and larger unities, — from the word to the simple 
sentence, from the simple sentence to the more and more 
complex sentence, and from the sentence to the paragraph, 
perhaps. But care must always be taken not to crowd the 
child beyond his ability to make out readily the principal 
words in a sentence. If he must struggle with each word, 
he acquires no idea of sentential unity, and this serves to 
impede his growth in using the sentence as a whole. On 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING l8l 

the other hand, he must never be permitted to settle down 
on a lower unity, to make it automatic before he employs 
it in a larger unity, or his mastery of these larger things will 
be seriously retarded. Automaticity is a matter for the high- 
est unities and not for the lower ones, except as they function 
as factors in the former. As Chubb ^ says, " experience 
amply proves, a too close attention to the word, a too close 
dealing with it out of its sentence relations and without in- 
sistence upon the synthetic process of grasping the meaning 
of the whole, develops into mere parrotry." 

The principle is that the child cannot economically 
grasp the more complex unities at the outset; and at the 
same time he will be impeded in his progress if we keep 
him dealing with those of a simpler order until he acquires 
the habit of attending to single words. Is there any middle 
course? Like all other matters of development, this one 
is exceedingly involved. The method must change as the 
learner's attitude changes; and it does change gradually 
as he accumulates experiences in handling words. When 
the novice gains mastery of two or three words, say, for 
illustration, Hiawatha and hoy or Indian hoy^ so that he can 
recognize them with some degree of certainty and celerity, 
he should cease to attend to them separately. He must 
henceforth deal with them mainly as they appear in the 
sentence, ''Hiawatha was an Indian boy.'' He must as 
rapidly as possible be made sentence-minded, being led 

1 "The Teaching of English," p. 71. 



l82 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

gradually to react upon words as factors only in the larger 
unity, the sentence. He must be aided by the teacher to 
handle the sentence as a unit; she may read the sentence 
herself so that it appears to be a unit, and then require 
the child to read it after her, even if mechanically at the 
outset. If the sentence gets established as a vocal unity, 
this will react upon the manner of perceiving it, coercing 
the eye to take it in as a whole. 

Then the teacher can use her pointer so as to make the 
sentence appear to the eye as a whole ; that is, she will not 
indicate each word for the learner to note by a special 
attentive attitude, but she will draw his attention upon the 
whole sentence, which must not be too involved at the start; 
and further she will constantly suggest to the pupil that it is 
the whole that is of importance, and not the elements as 
distinct entities. It is a matter of establishing habits of 
attention, — synthetic rather than analytic. The method 
indicated will, while permitting the child to start with single 
words, prevent his forming the habit of dealing with them 
individually. I have experimented with children who had 
in school got into the way of reacting to individual words 
(though they began reading with the sentence) and in time 
this tendency was overcome by the methods indicated. 
At first I would get them to read short phrases as units; * 

*To Illustrate: V. reads this sentence, "You — have — many — 
arrows — in — your — quiver, — but — you — will — not — kill — me 
— with — them," giving independent value to each word. In curing 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 83 

and then, without dwelling too long on these, they would 
move forward to the larger unit, and by repeating this until 
their grasp of it as a unit became secure, I could change 
the direction of attention from separate words to the sen- 
tence. Of course, individual words must of necessity re- 
ceive a relatively large amount of attention in the reading 
of the novice; but with right methods this may be made 
speedily less, the elements becoming readily merged in the 
whole. It is a simple enough fact that in the course of 
linguistic development elementary units of any order may 
be made to gradually coalesce, forming more complex 
patterns, when the act of recognitive attention may concern 
primarily the whole pattern without taking explicit account 
of its component figures. H., at ten, will read words that 
are considerably mutilated, if they only occur in more or 
less familiar contexts. She is wholly unaware of the mutila- 
tion until I ask her to " study " the words, when she will 

him of this trouble, I get him first to read "You have many arrows'* 
as a unit, then "in your quiver" as a unit; then he reads as a unit, being 
aided by my voice and my pencil, " You have many arrows in your quiver,'* 
Then we work with the second clause in the same manner, finally com- 
bining the several units into the whole, so that the learner feels its unitary 
character. It has been my experience that the novice is so much pleased 
when he is able to read in this way, probably because he gets more out 
of his sentence and he sees that what he does now is more nearly like what 
others do, that he is prejudiced in the direction of trying to read this way 
always. Once started in reading the sentence as a whole, he rapidly 
gains in facility. 

Compare with this Dearborn, "The Psychology of Reading," espe- 
cially pp. 96 et seq. Also Huey, op. cit. 



184 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

detect the errors in most cases. When I ask her why she 
thought, to illustrate, Wisocnsin was " Wisconsin," she 
replies that " it looked like it." Bagley,^ Bawden,^ and 
others have secured experimental evidence corroborative 
of this principle. It seems to be with reading as with ad- 
justment to other situations, — familiarity leads to reaction 
without focal attention to all the elements of a situation.^ 
Further, the child gradually grows to anticipate words. 
v., for instance, will in his reading go astray at times, be- 
cause certain words in the sentence before him reinstate 
other familiar sentences, and he really " sees " what has 
thus been revived and not what is now presented to him. 
All children, it is probable, thus " guess " constantly, 
which means that they tend to complete present situations 
in the light of past experience with situations similar in 
some respects. 
The mas- It has been said that when the learner is able to recognize 

less impor- without much hesitancy the principal words in the sentence, 
in sentence- ^^ should be encouragcd to deal with the latter as a unit, 
unities. -g^^ what of the less important words, such as is and 
an in "Hiawatha is an Indian boy"? These need not 
give us much concern at the outset. The pupil may not be 



* "The Apperception of the Spoken Sentence," Amer. Jour, of Psych.^ 
Vol. XII, and Reprint. 

' "A Study of Lapses," Psych. Rev., Monograph Supplement No. 14. 

5 Dearborn, "The Psychology of Reading," has treated this problem 
in great detail in studying the movements of the eye and reading pauses 
in reading. See especially Chaps. IV-XIII. 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 85 

vividly conscious of their individual existence, but yet he 
may pronounce them because he has heard the sentence as 
a whole, and now the two words he knows, Hiawatha 
and boy^ will reinstate this whole. Gradually, with repe- 
tition of the sentences in which is, say, occurs, it will begin 
to play its part, though it is not really necessary that it 
should be explicitly recognized very early. It gradually 
acquires more or less of marginal value, and this will meet 
the learner's needs temporarily.^ Of course, with enlarg- 
ing experiences the word, being utilized in so many different 
situations, acquires an individuality of its own, as do all the 
less important words, like thcj a, an; this, that, which; 
and as, to, in, of, for, etc. The principle is that all these 

* In connection with this statement, the following may be read with in- 
terest : " One of the most striking things brought out was the lack of asso- 
ciation from connective and relational words, definitive adjectives, etc., 
and the displeasure with which they came consequently to be regarded. 
They seldom aroused any ideas directly, and few associations of any kind 
except verbal ones, usually phrases of which they customarily form a part. 
Occasionally they gave evidence of setting the subject's thoughts in char- 
acteristic directions of expectancy; and doubtless the prepositions, espe- 
cially, always had some very general influence in determining how the 
whole thought-organism should face the coming related object. These 
vague expectancies were occasionally noticed by the subjects, particu- 
larly in the case of such words as 'between,' 'into,' etc. The whole 
feeling of the subjects toward these words and their inability to call up 
associations irresistibly suggested that the mind had no place for them 
as separate wholes, and that there was no normal way of thinking them 
except as more or less fused components of larger units; viz. as parts 
of phrases, and perhaps sentences, as they continually occur in reading." 
E. B. Huey, op. cit., p. 306. 



1 86 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

elements of minor significance in the sentence gradually 
come to distinct value through frequent repetition in many 
different contexts; ^ but it is not essential or desirable that 
the learner should apprehend this value in an explicit way 
before he reacts to many sentences containing these words. 
Common-sense educational theorizing makes a fundamental 
mistake in ignoring marginal processes in acquiring adjust- 
ment to any situation, especially a linguistic one such as we 
have been examining. 

4. Learning the Functions of Literal Symbols 

The pur- In what has been said thus far it has been implied that the 

pose of 

"phonic novice should be introduced to words mainly as auditory, 
ysis. yocal, and visual wholes. The word should be to him 
a picture which he should grasp as a unit ; ^ he should not 
regard it as an organism, with its various members per- 
forming special offices. Now, conceivably, he might go 
on in this way and learn all the words in the language as 
individual pictures without ever discovering the " powers " 
of the letters, though he would be Hkely, even if he should 
receive no suggestion from his teacher, to observe that cer- 
tain visual forms were invariably rendered by certain 
sounds, but I do not imagine he would go very far in this 
if left wholly to himself.^ But if he discovers in some way 

* Compare Huey, op. ciL, p. 306. 

2 Compare Titchener, " An Outline of Psychology," p. 146. 
^ Compare the following : " A pupil taught to read by the word-method 
first associates the optical form of the word as a whole with the sound of 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 187 

the function of the different letters in various relationships, 
he can readily decipher new combinations, and so he will 
not be compelled to learn them as though they were ab- 
solutely new. As intimated above, he would probably 
notice spontaneously that certain words that looked alike 
had the same vocal and auditory quality, but it will prove 
of service to him to have what he might gain incidentally 
in this way greatly extended and perfected by appropriate 
instruction. In this analytic work, the most effective 
method of procedure is undoubtedly to begin with the 
largest members of the verbal organism, — the syllables.* 

the word without linking parts of this sound with particular parts of the 
optical form, i.e. with letters ; and so his reading may go on for a while. 
But gradually, even if he has never been taught that the optical form is 
composed of letter-units, he will note the likeness of the crooked beginning 
of 'star' with the crooked beginning of 'slipper,' e.g., and will form an 
association of this crookedness with the hissing sound noticed as occurring 
in both words. The association of the optical form of the letter with its 
sound thus arises and soon becomes inveterate. Doubtless the appearance 
of letters at the beginning and end of words facilitates the linking of par- 
ticular sounds with particular letter-forms; but it would come in any 
case ; and I think it tolerably certain that, whatever the learning-method, 
the reader must and does come to feel the force, visual and auditory, of 
individual letters before he reads with much facility." E. B. Huey, op, 
cit., p. 299. 

^ Collins {op. cit., 132) gives some suggestive observations respecting 
the way in which aphasic patients relearn to read. They first get a view 
of words as wholes, then they take account of the syllables constituting 
a word, and finally they come to the letters last of all. Compare with this 
an interesting article by Ounf {Jour, oj Nervous and Mental Diseases, 
March, 1897, pp. 147-148 especially) in which he shows that English- 
speaking children at any rate do not learn to read " spellingwise." 



155 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

The syllables may be slightly separated from one another 
in visual and vocal presentation so as to suggest their 
individuality, and yet they should not be separated so 
markedly as to break up the larger unity. The same may 
be said without modification of the teaching of the values 
of the letters, — phonic analysis. In all this work the 
lower unit must not be lost out of the higher one; that is 
to say, syllables and phonic elements must always be 
reacted to as functional in words, which in turn remain 
functional in sentences. 
The danger Here is our problem, then, and a complex one it is, — to 
phonic give the novice a sense of the value of elementary factors; 

but at the same time we must get him into the way of 
always regarding them as functioning in complex wholes. 
In accomplishing this the learner's analysis must extend 
only to the point of discovering elementary values without 
ever dwelling on them apart from their usual connections, 
and hastening as rapidly as possible to give them the value 
usually given them in every-day speech. Let it be added 
that it is a violation of this principle to have daily drills 
upon the sounds of the letters in isolation. They really 
have no phonic values in isolation. One may hear teachers 
tell children that c, for instance, has the value of kuh, 
which is probably never the case; and similar comment 
might be made upon the powers ascribed, in formal phonic 
drill, to other letters. 
It must be kept in mind that the sole object of this 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 89 

analytic work is to put the learner in possession of means The 
whereby he can identify new words on his own initiative, phonic 
Any method, then, which will lead him to feel the "pow- ^^y^^^* 
ers" of the letters readily, and make him effective in using 
this knowledge in new situations, will be of advantage. 
For instance, words that have a certain element in com- 
mon, as mat, hat, cat, rat, etc., may be grouped together, and 
the learner will soon come to feel the value of the common 
element, at. The possibilities of work of this character are 
well-nigh unlimited. When the learner comes to the point 
of using his phonic knowledge in making out new words, 
the teacher will see to it that he will not go beyond his actual 
need in his analysis.* If he can identify man, say, with- 

1 Rice ("The Public School System of the United States," pp. 86-87) 
gives examples of actual lessons he saw in his inspection of schools in 
diflFerent American cities, lessons in which the wasteful error is com- 
mitted of carrying analysis too far, and making it too explicit and 
dominant. Here is a sample: "The sentence, *Is it a quail, John?* 
had previously been written upon another blackboard, and the teacher 
asked the children to read it together. 'Read it backward first,' she said. 
The children then read the words as the teacher pointed to them with her 
baton, and after they had read the sentence backward and forward, they 
spelled all the words contained in it. The teacher endeavored to keep 
them in time by sweeping her stick across each word while the children 
were spelling it, as she had done in the other case. 'You don't spell 
"John" very well yet,' the teacher now remarked. 'Let us try it over 
again, but don't sing it.' She then spelled the word for the class, imme- 
diately, however, falling into the sing-song which she had told the chil- 
dren to avoid. After she had sung it alone two or three times, the voices 
of the children began to chime in, but she continued to spell with them. 
While teaching the children to spell the word ' John,' she adopted a dif- 



I go LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

out hesitation, it will be a mistake to require him to go 
through a process of formal phonic drill on it; though it 
may be serviceable to use this word to assist in making out 
a new one somewhat like it. Analysis should be regarded 
as a necessary evil, and we must get on with as little 
of it as possible. Let it be employed only when by means 
of it the child can extricate himself from a present 
dij6&culty. 

This method is likely to lead to one result which may 
occasion the over- anxious teacher some worry. If we en- 
courage the learner to react as readily as possible to words 
as wholes; if we discourage the analytic tendency, then he 
will probably go astray occasionally in his recognition of 
words that look somewhat alike. If we train him to be 
non-critical of the details of verbal forms, he will fall into 
the habit of reacting to the more prominent characteris- 
tics only of the words he sees. To illustrate : if he has 
learned the word through and he sees the word thorough 
for the first time, the chances are that he will call it through, 
unless the teacher has warned him against it by directing 
his attention at the first moment to the elements which dis- 
tinguish the new form from the old one.^ The principle is 

ferent plan of leading them. She now beat time, and this she did most 
comically, by bringing her hands (with backs upward) as near to her 
shoulders as possible, when she pronounced the word * capital,' and thrust- 
ing them forcibly forward when she uttered the ']*." 

^ A somewhat similar difficulty is encountered in oral language in the 
use of homophones, as break and brake, heir and air, for example. Of 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING I9I 

universal in its application. As Chambers ^ says, even 
adults have " difficulty in the use of such a word as * cessa- 
tion/ after being familiar with * secession/ Physiology 
and psychology, apperception and appreciation, are pairs 
which have proved a source of difficulty for older pupils, 
while little tots have been known to be perplexed by such 
slight resemblances as dog and god^ like and kill, lead and 
deal, did and died. The same tendency to see the old in 
the new is illustrated by the case of the little girl who read 
jaiher 'fat her' and Stephen * Step hen.' " 

1. To the novice, visual verbal forms seem of slight im- Summary, 
portance. The objects that have attracted his attention before 

he starts his reading have all had concrete meaning for him, 
and have appealed to the eye on account of prominent character- 
istics of form and color. Verbal symbols lack the qualities 
that make objects in the world of interest to the child. 

2. Verbal symbols are, to the novice, lacking in individu- 
ality, imlike the real objects with which he has been dealing. 
He comes to reading without experience in noting the essential 
characteristics in things of the sort he now encounters. 

course, the only way the hearer can orient himself with reference to these 
terms is by reacting upon them in the light of their contextual connec- 
tions. There is still another difl&culty due to the same general cause, 
and which must be overcome in the same way, encountered in learning 
words that have elements much alike in visual form, but quite different 
in auditory and vocal forms, as for instance, "break," "freak"; "sew," 
"few"; "horse," "worse"; "shoe," "foe"; "hose," "dose," "lose," 
"comb," "tomb"; "home," "some"; "paid," "said"; "blood," 
"flood," "good"; "mould," "could"; "done," "gone," "lone," and 
so on ad libitum. 

*"How Words get Meaning," Fed. Sent., March, 1904, Vol. XI, p. 48. 



192 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

3. The child is not natively interested in reading, and he 
will not become interested until he gains some facility in react- 
ing to words as symbols of experience. 

4. In teaching the child to read, we must lead him to such 
a knowledge of the several language units that they can be 
recognized and used separately as occasion requires. At the 
same time, he must acquire such facility in the employment of 
the larger units that the elements of which they are constituted 
will function only marginally as factors and not as independent 
units. 

5. The novice experiences unusual difficulty in exploiting 
visual verbal forms. It is probable that static forms lacking 
pronounced color values attract relatively little attention from 
the young. Verbal forms are lacking in the structural char- 
acteristics that appeal to the eye of the child. 

6. In exploiting Hteral forms, the novice must see them 
being constructed; or better still, he must be guided to con- 
struct them himself. The motor factor plays an important 
part in gaining mastery of verbal forms. 

7. The extreme difficulty of learning a letter as a thing 
apart has led teachers to adopt various artificial schemes 
for establishing associations for the letters. The alphabetic 
method of teaching reading is wasteful and ineffective. 

8. There is a limit to the complexity of the forms which the 
child can economically handle at the outset. He should begin 
with words denoting familiar but interesting objects before he 
attacks the sentence. However, 

9. Words should always be felt as functional in larger 
unities. The child will be arrested in his progress if he learns 
words automatically as independent units. 

10. The less important words in the sentence must not be 



ACQUISITION OF WORD-IDEAS IN READING 1 93 

learned separately. They will at first be overlooked altogether, 
but gradually, as they occur in different situations, their func- 
tion in the sentence will begin to be appreciated, and by fre- 
quent repetition they will be mastered. 

11. Early in his learning, the child must be led to discover 
that certain visual forms are invariably rendered by certain 
sounds, for this will enable him to help himself in new verbal 
situations. He should begin by syllabication, when this is 
possible, of words he has heretofore dealt with as wholes; and 
he should proceed therefrom to the functions of the letters. 

12. However, in this work the lower units must always be 
felt as functional in larger wholes, and not as independent units. 
There is great danger in phonic analysis of making phonic ele- 
ments too prominent. 

13. Care must be taken not to have the novice make use of 
phonic analysis as a matter of mere drill. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 

I. Automatic Facility in Graphic Expression 

The char- In the discussion of visual, vocal, and auditory word- 
graphic ideas we saw that it was the aim to acquire them — all 
wor -1 eas. ^-j^^gg ^j^g^l- entered prominently into the needs of daily life 
— so that they could be employed automatically in the 
reactions in which they functioned. The same aim in prin- 
ciple must guide us in the acquisition of graphic word-ideas. 
It should, perhaps, be observed at the outset that it may 
not be strictly in accord with contemporary psychological 
theory to use the terms " graphic word-ideas," implying 
thereby that there is a distinct cerebral graphic word-centre 
in which verbal forms may be imaged motorially. It is 
more likely that graphic word-ideas are just special motor 
complexes arising from reaction upon visual and possibly 
auditory and vocal word-ideas. But this particular point 
need not concern us specially here, for it is not at all vital 
to our present purpose. 

Whether there be a cerebral graphic word-centre or not, 
it must at any rate be granted that it is possible to acquire 

194 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 1 95 

automatic facility in graphic expression. Take a child The method 
who begins writing words at seven, say ; observe with what autoi^^^^ 
difficulty he performs his tasks. Let him now have ten c^ji^n^®^®" 
minutes' experience every day in writing a certain group of 
words, and note how, comparing his achievements week 
by week, he gains in ease, readiness, and surety of execu- 
tion, until after three years of such training he can, without 
any apparent effort, " exteriorize " many simple words re- 
lating to the experiences of daily life. He has evidently 
established manual and digital habits relating to the words 
in question, so that the visual, auditory, or vocal verbal 
imagery which was originally focal, and essential to set 
up and control the graphic processes, now functions only 
marginally in initiating and continuing these processes. 
There is not normally a large number of words that the 
child can write automatically by the ninth year ; but there 
are many words that are pushing forward rapidly toward 
automaticity. 

Theoretically, at any period in the individual's career 
words may be found in every stage of development from 
deliberate to automatic execution. At the growing point 
new words, relating usually to new experience, are constantly 
being introduced into the vocabulary; and if this expe- 
rience is oft repeated in daily life, and the symbols expres- 
sive thereof are frequently employed, they start down the 
course toward the automatic goal. Some of the words, 
however, which do not enter largely into the activities of 



196 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

every- day adjustments will remain near the focus of atten- 
tion perpetually in a state of arrested development, so far 
as facility in execution is concerned. As the body of 
graphic word-ideas functioning automatically increases, 
the greater will be the probability that any new word will 
readily fit into one of these verbal habits and be executed 
with ease. Take, for example, the nine-year-old who 
comes for the first time upon the word invaluable. The 
elementary forms of which this is compounded, iw, value, 
ablcj are familiar to him. Then what is required now is 
not to learn this new thing de novo, but to get the swing 
of these familiar elements in this special combination. It 
is certain the pupil will show some hesitation when he first 
attacks this word, but the period of experiment will be 
greatly abbreviated as a result of having gained facility 
in executing the elements. 

2. Imagery Functioning in Graphic Expression 

Visual im- We must now turn our attention to the imagery upon 
which graphic verbal processes depend. The popular view 
is that we must always " see '' what we write. Undoubt- 
edly visual imagery is involved in the graphic processes of 
most adults who have learned writing by reproducing a 
copy; but there seems to be no reason why one should not 
react in any particular motor way upon auditory stimulation 
without the intervention of visual images. For purposes 
of experiment, I blindfold S. and pronounce to him the 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 1 97 

Greek letter 6. Immediately after, I take his finger and 
trace the letter on the table a few times, and then ask him 
to do it. In the same way I pronounce <^, and tt, and guide 
his reaction in a certain way; and I repeat the process 
every day for a week. He has not seen these letters, has 
not heard their names until now, and, of course, has never 
tried to reproduce them heretofore. But before the week 
is over he can write them quite readily when I pronounce 
them. It is doubtful if visual imagery plays any appre- 
ciable role in this reproduction, though it is possible that S. 
does visualize a form when, blindfolded, he is made to 
trace it with his finger. But if he does, the image is prob- 
ably quite obscure,^ and it does not appear to be essential 
to the graphic reproduction of the auditory word. 

One who will observe a child at the very outset of his Kinas- 
acquiring graphic word-ideas will be convinced that visual agery. 
imagery is not the all-controlling factor. When V. was 
learning to write his name, Vincent, he would get halfway 
through, perhaps, and then he would ask : "Now which way 
does it go? " "This way? " (trying it) " or this way? " 

^ It should be understood that S. is only four, and has had no experi- 
ence in writing or reading, so that he probably has no word-ideas of a 
visual or graphic character. When I try the experiment with H. at nine 
I am confident she visualizes forms which she traces; indeed, she says 
she can " see " them. The natural history of this phenomenon seems plain 
enough. In her writing, visual images and graphic processes have always 
been inseparably connected, and when one occurs, the other is reinstated. 
But S., lacking H.'s experience, unquestionably lacks the imaging activity 
which is the function of that experience. 



198 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

(trying it in the new way). It seemed apparent that his 
attention was not centred entirely upon the visual image of 
the word; he was rather attempting to act in a way he had 
acted before as a matter of motor process mainly. This 
process included only a part of the elements comprising the 
complex graphic word-idea Vincent ; he had not yet been 
able to integrate all the elementary processes into a unity; 
hence his failure to reproduce the whole series. Doubtless 
visual imagery was involved in V.'s execution, but so was 
kinaesthetic imagery; he could feel he was right or wrong 
as well by the tone of present kinaesthetic as of visual expe- 
rience. If, now, I put a copy before V., he can reproduce 
it quite readily, showing that the visual image must have 
become connected with definite motor processes, and so it 
is able to set off those processes, though a certain amount 
of attentive effort is required. In the case of H., the image 
reinstates the appropriate motor processes automatically; 
and this is doubtless the primary function of visual im- 
agery in graphic expression. It serves to reinstate motor 
processes with which it has become associated in the learn- 
ing experience. However, once the motor processes con- 
stituting a graphic word-idea are set a-going, the complex 
will run itself off in all cases where facile habits have been 
established. As development proceeds, visual imagery 
takes on ever more largely the function of simple suggestion. 
It seems possible that one may acquire his graphic 
word-ideas in such a way that auditory and vocal imagery 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD- IDEAS 1 99 

are essential to their functioning. We hear of people who Auditory 
" spell by the ear," or who, when they are perplexed in writ- imagery, 
ing a word, must first " spell it aloud to get the swing of it 
in the tongue." It is probably the case that if a child 
spells orally mainly during the formative years, he becomes 
dependent in his writing upon vocal imagery. Again, the 
child who has learned to spell phonetically is always trying 
to detect the phonic " powers " of any word, when these 
will arouse the visual and graphic forms associated there- 
with. 

We may now glance at the interdependence of linguistic The inter- 
modes as revealed in pathological cases, — in aphasias of ofUngiStic 
different sorts. Collins ^ declares that graphic expression ^ygaied^in 
depends upon yisual imagery mainly, though the visual aphasias, 
imagery cannot be evoked except by first arousing audi- 
tory imagery and kinaesthetic memories. In the accom- 
panying diagram (I), V denotes the cerebral centre for 
visual verbal-images; A the centre for auditory verbal- 
images ; L the centre for kinaesthetic memories, and S the 
centre governing the motor process employed in writing. 
Further, C denotes the centre wherein impressions are co- 
ordinated, where *' ideas are formed," where " conception 
takes place." Now, if a child has an idea, formed at C, 
and wishes to express it in writing, appropriate verbal- 
images would be evoked at A ; these would then evoke the 
appropriate images at F; next there would be evoked char- 

1 See his "The Faculty of Speech," p. 64. 



200 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

acteristic kinaesthetic images at K; and lastly certain defi- 
nite motor impulses would be sent out through 5, resulting 



/y^^Or 


_^ 


^-^^\ 


/^ 


<^^^^yz^^^^\S\ 


'J^\ ///// 


r^^^ 


-^ ^y^^w \ 


lATE. ^^ y^' ^ \ 




LARYNX i/\ / \ \ 

N y/1 ' 




P(HRAT.OH^ / V'"™ 




>^ \ 




y^^ \ 




^^~""^==:rJ 


y^^ 



I. Diagram of Speech Centres and Conception Area 
(Collins, p. 45) 

in the production of appropriate verbal characters. Col- 
lins says that in adult life the visual verbal imagery 
is probably always inseparably connected with auditory 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 



20I 



imagery, and so the auditory form of a word must always 
be aroused before the word can be written. 

The relationships between the different language modes, 
as stated by Collins, are not agreed to in all details by 




II. Diagrammatic Representation of Speech Mechanism 
(From "Aphasia and the Cerebral Speech Mechanism," Elder, p. 6i) 

authorities such as Wylie,^ Lichtheim,^ Wernicke,^ Elder,* 
and others, but there seems to be agreement in respect to 
the main points of interest to us at this time. These points 
may be made clearer by glancing at Elder's views. In the 
accompanying diagram (II), agraphia, the loss of power 
to write words, will occur always when there is a lesion at 
D, the psycho-motor centre for writing. If there is no other 
lesion in the cerebral cortex, the patient can hear words, 
can understand spoken words, can see words, can under- 

^ "Disorders of Speech." ' Brain, January, 1885. 

=> Ibid., April, 1888, p. 19. 

* "Aphasia and the Cerebral Speech Mechanism." 



202 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Stand words written, can speak voluntarily, can repeat 
words, and can read aloud; but he cannot write voluntarily 
or from dictation, nor can he copy printed into written 
words. It is apparent that motor verbal imagery is com- 
pletely destroyed. 

Agraphia will occur again when there is a lesion between 
Eand B, indicating that " ideas " cannot set a-going motor 
graphic processes directly. In neurological terms there 
is no cortical route from E to D, Thoughts must first be 
framed, as it were, in articulatory imagery before these 
can be revealed in graphic motor processes. Now, as 
Elder states the case, we might infer that a patient who had 
lost C, the visual cortical word-centre, could still express 
himself in writing, but such is not the case. Patients 
afflicted with pictorial visual aphasia, resulting from lesion 
of the cortical visual word-centre, cannot write voluntarily 
or from dictation, showing that visual verbal imagery is 
inseparably associated with verbal motor processes. In 
cases where A, the auditory cortical word-centre, is de- 
stroyed, producing pictorial auditory aphasia, the patient 
shows great disturbance in written as in vocal expression, 
but still he can write voluntarily, showing that motor ver- 
bal processes are not absolutely dependent upon auditory 
verbal imagery. Finally, when the psycho-motor centre 
for speech, B, is destroyed, the patient cannot write volun- 
tarily or from dictation, showing that the route from idea 
to motor execution involves the speech centres, at any rate. 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 203 

Out of this law of the relationship of the linguistic pro- The method 
cesses grows the practical principle that in the school the speUing"^^ 
individual should become habituated in the special mode 
of execution of word-ideas which will be mainly required 
of him in the adjustments of mature life. This means that 
the pupil must learn to spell graphically, so that all im- 
agery — visual, vocal, auditory — may to the greatest 
possible extent be expressed automatically through the 
hand. Graphic execution should be the goal of all verbal 
imagery when the individual is in the need of execution; 
and motor habits should be established for all words which 
will be employed very frequently. No matter how facile 
vocal word-ideas become, if they are not carried directly 
into graphic execution, the individual will not profit greatly 
in the sort of spelling that will be of service to him in ma- 
turity, though doubtless there is some gain in graphic func- 
tion whenever there is advance made in any mode of verbal 
imagery wherein the elements of verbal forms are focalized.^ 

3. Psychological Relation of Reading and Spelling 

This leads to a consideration of the claim made by some The acqui- 
teachers that spelling is a function of reading; if one can visual is 
read readily, he will be able to spell readily. But expe- ^^If^^^ 
rience shows that a child may read very well, but be quite ^^^i^^^ 

•^ J y ^ word-ideas. 

* I discuss farther along the theory that a pupil will learn to spell inci- 
dentally, or as a function of his reading or growth in intelligence in any 
direction. 



204 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

devoid of graphic word-ideas.* It is safe to say that 
practically all pupils in the elementary school can read 
many words which they cannot spell; and as a general 
principle they can read ordinary words very much more 
readily than they can spell them. I may give here, for 
purposes of illustration, a typical " language exercise '^ 
of a nine-year-old child who could read with ease and 
readiness, in respect alike to understanding and word 
recognition, such books as Kingsley's " Water Babies," 
Ruskin's " King of the Golden River," "Swiss Family 
Robinson," " Robinson Crusoe," any of the volumes in the 
Young Folks Library,^ and the simpler works of Cooper, 
Dickens, Scott, and the like. 

1 went to the Fair and I sawe (saw) the rases (races) theae 
(they) begane at 2 O'colk and I went in to the Lafthing (laughing) 
clary (gallery) when you got in there you could not stop lafthing 
untill you came out the inside of the tent was made up of a lot of 
looking glaes and when you went in there you wure magnfide so 
you look very funy it made your head very large and your body 
every smal and your legs look to large for your feet and they 
looked very smal and your ams looked very smal and fat and 
your hands looked ofer larg and thing. 

Your Troue Frind 

The theory that the child can spell all that he can read 
is founded on erroneous psychology. We have seen that 
in visual word-ideas the elementary units may not be 

» Cf. Bawden, "A Study of Lapses," Psych. Rev., Monograph Sup- 
plement, pp. 46-49. 

2 "The Hall and Locke " Series, Boston. 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 205 

distinctly apprehended so that they can all be named, or 
if named, reproduced in just the manner in which they 
occur in the original. For purposes of reading it is not 
essential to be focally aware of all details in their sequen- 
tial order; but this is absolutely essential in speUing. 
That is to say, spelling is for most, if not all, persons a more 
analytic process than reading, referring now only to the 
method of dealing with the word-ideas pure and simple. 
Further, it would be detrimental in reading to get into 
the habit of perceiving words for the purpose of repro- 
ducing them, for this would put too great emphasis upon 
mere technique, a point which will be gone into in detail 
in the following chapter. 

Enough has been said, perhaps, to indicate that there Phonic anal- 
are many objections to acquiring the habit of depending speliSg. 
upon phonic analysis in spelling, as there are doubtless 
some advantages. If our language were constructed on 
phonic principles throughout, it would probably be an 
economical plan to first master the graphic symbol for 
each of the " powers " of the literal elements of words; 
and then by analysis of unfamiliar words the component 
elements could be discovered and readily executed. This 
is doubtless the theory which has been adopted by those 
persons who advocate the teaching of spelling phonetically. 
But if we train our pupils to proceed in this manner, they 
will tend to follow it in all situations, and this will lead them 
astray as often, perhaps, as it will lead them to success. 



2o6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

I have had an opportunity to study this matter in detail 
in the training of several children, and I am persuaded 
that facihty in phonic analysis and a disposition to rely 
upon it exclusively in times of uncertainty is detrimental 
to ejQ5cient spelling. I take the following examples from 
a single language exercise of an eight-year-old child who 
dashes off new words with readiness, always proceeding 
phonetically according to her understanding of the pro- 
nunciation of words: Orenj (orange); plesent (pleasant); 
vakashun (vacation); hrekjust (breakfast); cosin (cousin); 
diner (dinner); jrinds (friends); kitchun (kitchen). The 
facihty of this child in phonic attack upon words, which 
proved helpful in her early experience when hsts of words 
were presented that could be treated phonetically, is now 
at times a hindrance, for it makes it difficult for her to 
learn many words as individuals, each having a distinct 
graphic personahty. It will doubtless prove of advantage 
to the pupil if we group words together for him so far as 
they have similar phonic values; but yet this must not be 
carried to the extent that the pupil will get into the way 
of thinking that all words are spelled according to their 
sound, which will happen if we keep him dealing for the 
first few years with those words only that are so spelled. 
He must early have much experience in visualizing words 
vividly, and reproducing them without attempting phonic 
analysis. The case of V. may be cited to illustrate the 
value of this method. In his eighth year he was spelUng 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 207 

slowly and poorly, mainly because he was dealing pho- 
netically with all the words he had occasion to write. For 
ten minutes every day for a number of months I have made 
the experiment of having him look at a word for a moment 
and reproduce it quickly without " sounding " or spelling 
orally.^ In the beginning he would need to look at simple 
words three or four times before he could complete the 
reproduction; he had not formed the habit of " taking a 
snapshot " of a word, and imaging it clearly. But he 
grew rapidly in this abiUty, and now he can spell quite 
satisfactorily, mainly because he has acquired the ability 
to grasp readily the appearance of words, and image them. 

We have to notice next the current theory that spelling Teaching 
should be taught incidentally, not explicitly. The pupil, ScidentaUy. 
it is said, should be required to write his lessons freely, 
and in so doing he will gradually master words on the 
graphic side. Experience has shown, it seems, that the 
traditional practice of drilling on words taken from the 
ordinary text-book, where the aim was to present twenty 
or twenty-five thousand of the most-used words,^ has not 
proved to be entirely successful. This is the static method 
of teaching. Pupils are found (I have followed the matter 
in detail with H., V., and S.) who can spell formal Hsts of 

* After a time, however, I found it advantageous to have him pronounce 
the word when he saw it, then spell orally, then write rapidly. This more 
complex process developed a feeling of familiarity with the word more 
readily than simply writing it. 

^ See Johnson, "Old-time Schools and School-books," pp. 167-233. 



2o8 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

words, but who cannot be depended upon when they need 
to employ these same words readily in the expression of 
their thought.^ In the latter case there are a number of 
conditions which are not presented in the former, so that 
a word might seem famihar to a degree in isolation, but 
strange when used in connection with other words in a 
sentence. To acquire ease and surety in the handling of 
words, they must be acquired in the situations in which 
they will be employed. But we encounter here a difficulty 
similar to that which has engaged our attention elsewhere; 
the beginner cannot economically attack complex spelling 
situations at the outset. He must first acquire some skill 
in writing a number of words individually before he can 
combine them in sentences in the expression of his thought. 
Elementary difficulties must be surmounted before com- 
plex ones may be attacked, else the pupil will be 
overwhelmed, and fail to organize his experience, which 
inevitably results when he is plunged precipitously into 
intricate situations without having had sufficient experience 
with the elements thereof. How, then, may we harmo- 
nize these requirements, — the learning of spelling through 
the writing of words correctly in written expression, while 
making a beginning with individual words? The prin- 
ciple which must guide us has already been expounded in 
application to other phases of linguistic instruction. The 

^ See the results of studies made by Cornman, "Spelling in the Ele- 
mentary School" (Ginn & Co.). 



ACQUISITION OF GRAPHIC WORD-IDEAS 209 

learner must at the earliest practicable moment be re- 
quired to employ in combination the words he has been 
writing in isolation. There should be no effort made to 
have him perfect his spelling by drilling upon formal 
lists; automatization must be secured mainly by syn- 
thetic experience. 

1. It has not been proven that there is a cerebral graphic Summary, 
word-centre in which verbal forms may be imaged motorially. 

2. When the child begins writing words, the process in- 
volves visual and kinaesthetic, and possibly auditory and vocal, 
imagery. But with repetition it happens in time that these ver- 
bal images function only marginally. 

3. Visual imagery seems to be prominent in the graphic 
processes of the majority of individuals; but experiment shows 
that it is possible to secure graphic reaction upon auditory 
stimulus without the intervention of visual imagery. 

4. Kinassthetic imagery is probably most prominent in 
the early stages of learning to write words. 

5. If a child spells orally mainly during his early years, 
he becomes largely dependent in his written spelling upon vocal 
imagery. One who has learned to spell phonetically is also 
dependent upon vocal imagery. 

6. In learning to spell, the pupil should put his emphasis 
upon graphic execution. He should be made to gain vivid 
visual impressions of words, and reproduce graphically as wholes 
to the greatest extent possible. 

7. Spelling does not develop pari passu with reading; 
visual word-ideas are acquired more rapidly than graphic 
word-ideas. Spelling is a more analytic process than reading. 

8. While there are advantages in the phonic method of 

p 



2IO LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

learning spelling, there is at the same time danger of carrying 
this work too far. The pupil must not become habituated to 
attacking all words phonically. 

9. Spelling cannot be taught fully in an incidental manner. 
It will not take care of itself, though much can be accomplished 
if the pupil has opportunity to write freely in all his studies. 



CHAPTER IX 

DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING FOR WORD-IDEAS IN 
READING 

I. Coalescence of Word- and Meaning-ideas 

In the preceding chapter our inquiry related primarily The spe- 
to the processes involved in the acquisition of visual jem. 
verbal- ideas as mere forms; we have yet to consider how 
the learner may most effectively attain the ultimate end 
in learning to read, — the employment of word-ideas as 
symbols of meaning. It is apparent that this division of 
our subject is to some extent artificial and formal, but it 
seems to be justified for purposes of clearness in discussion. 
Word-ideas are not normally acquired wholly at one period 
in the learning process, meaning-ideas at another period, 
and their association effected at a still later period. It 
has already been indicated that many, if not most, auditory 
verbal- ideas and their correlated meaning-ideas are ac- 
quired practically simultaneously, so that they tend to 
coalesce; and as development proceeds they become 
indissoluble in all ordinary functioning, though they may 
be disjoined when, by attending to some special charac- 
teristic of the verbal form, the verbal- idea may momen- 



212 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

tarily, and to a greater or less extent, be drawn out of the 
meaning complex with which it has coalesced. It is 
doubtful, however, if this principle holds generally in 
respect to the acquisition of visual verbal-ideas and their 
meaning; though it must depend largely, of course, upon 
the manner in which they are experienced at the outset. 
Conditions In his class in reading, the problem of the instructor is 

favoring 

coalescence, to teach his children to recognize (which means in this 
connection to interpret) readily and accurately the visual 
symbols that denote the experiences of daily life. As to 
method, the principles involved have already been men- 
tioned. The word or sentence and the thing or. phenome- 
non it denotes must be experienced, actually or ideally, un- 
der such conditions, temporal and adjustive, that they will 
tend to coalesce. This does not imply that when a visual 
symbol is being learned its meaning must be focal in 
consciousness. Indeed, it is probably best that it should 
not be focal. The meaning-idea is generally already well 
established when the child begins reading, and functions 
marginally in his adjustments, and this is sufficient in 
order that the word-idea may fuse with it. It is not only 
not necessary to have the meaning-idea focal in the early 
work in reading, but it is decidedly objectionable, since 
it impedes the mastery of the verbal form, and it renders 
conscious, slow, and laborious, processes that should be- 
come rapid, easy, and even automatic. The point is that 
meaning should be only marginally, not focally, aroused 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 213 

in all early reading, which concerns familiar experience, 
at any rate. Of course, we have here a very complex 
matter, which is extremely difficult to treat effectively 
on the practical side. In the past, word-ideas were often 
gained without any meaning-ideas being associated there- 
with, either focally or marginally, and this proved a waste- 
ful proceeding. On the other hand, some modern teachers 
make meaning-ideas so prominent in their work that the 
pupil is seriously handicapped in acquiring word-ideas. 
The latter are really the new experiences for him, and they 
should receive his main attention, but always with the 
meaning near the focus. As the pupil proceeds, and gains 
a considerable vocabulary of word-ideas, then gradually 
he will enter fields where both the word and the meaning 
will function marginally, the word retaining just the feeling 
left from the original focal adjustment. 

Huey,^ touching upon one phase of the principle in Reading 

without 

question, says that when he began his special study of this translation, 
subject it seemed " as though reading was dead, inane, — 
really not reading at all unless there was constant transla- 
tion into the realities symbolized" ; but " I found various 
good thinkers and workers in science who seemed to be 
predominatingly verbalists in their reading.^ I am not 
sure," he continues, '' but that the most of us read by 

^ E. B. Huey, " On the Psychology and Physiology of Reading," Amer. 
Jour, of Psych. ^ Vol. XII, 1900-1901, p. 309. 

^ We might expect this when we recall the results of Galton's tests of 
the imaging power of men of science. 



214 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

far the most of our words and phrases without appreciable 
translation. Such verbal readers and thinkers may be 
analogous to a banker who does an immense business 
in terms of drafts, banknotes, checks, etc., — controls all 
sorts of situations by them, is free to convert them into 
property or whatever else they represent at any time, but 
would be much hampered if he actually had to do this 
converting very often. So such a reader carries on his 
reading and thinking in a kind of shorthand, uses a mental 
algebra, lives in a word- world, a world of symbols. He 
can thus be more systematic, precise, expeditious; and 
after all, his method may not be so fundamentally differ- 
ent from that of the reader who habitually translates into 
images; for the latter is but a dealer in other symbols of 
the same realities; symbols which he takes comfort in 
thinking are more like the realities than those in which 
the verbalist revels. Such use of words, however, cannot 
and should not come until a broad and deep basis for it 
has been laid in terms of experience with the reahties 
and with the images which more nearly represent them. 
Words, except as they are correctly and intelligently 
convertible, are certainly most deceptive and dangerous 
symbols for the reader as for the thinker.'' 

For economic and effective reading, then, symbols and 
the content they symbolize must be in experience together, 
the former focally, and the latter marginally, except where 
both word and meaning are unfamiliar. It is particu- 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 215 

larly important that verbal forms should not go beyond xheintro- 

reasonably well-assimilated experience. It is not neces- symbols 

sary to dwell upon the principle that it results in serious ^"^g^^^^ 

waste to endeavor to master symbols that cannot coalesce *^® learner's 

•^ range of 

with the content they symbolize for the reason that such experience, 
content is beyond the pupil's grasp. ^ The one needful 
thing in learning words quickly is that the learner should 
readily come to acquire the feeling of familiarity toward 
them; but this familiarity cannot be gained, except at 
great loss, so long as the content lies outside of well-inte- 
grated experience. 

It is cause for general rejoicing that the old-style reading 
texts which contained passages far beyond the compre- 
hension of the pupils ^ for whom they were designed, are 
passing out of the schools, though they have not yet fully 
disappeared.^ As Professor Hinsdale has said: — 

^ In some experiments made upon V. especially, it was found that he 
would learn words with far greater readiness if they related to interesting 
content within his experience than if the content was beyond his grasp. 
Many of the words in Longfellow's "Hiawatha" are quite complex on 
the side of form, but children learn them without difficulty. But V., 
at eight years of age, long after he had read "Hiawatha," attempting to 
read a number of the selections in the "Hawthorne Third Reader" made 
very slow progress because the content was beyond his grasp. Conse- 
quently he could not gain the feeling of familiarity with the words, though 
he could make them out by phonic analysis. 

^ See Johnson, " Old-time Schools and School-books," pp. 69-100 
and 233-301 (New York, 1904); also Reeder, "The Historical Develop- 
ment of School Readers," etc. (New York, 1900), in " Columbia University 
Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology, and Education." 

^ "The meaninglessness to a young child of the words of the ordinary 



2l6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

" In many of the reading-books now in use in the schools, 
the pithy sayings of learned men, the aphorisms in which 
moralists have deposited a life of observation and experi- 
ence, the maxims of philosophers embodying the highest 
forms of intellectual truth, are set down as First Lessons 
for children; as though because a child was born after 
Bacon and Franklin, he could understand them, of course. 
While a child is still engrossed with visible and palpable 
objects, while his juvenile playthings are yet a mystery 
to him, he is presented with some abstraction or generali- 
zation, just discovered, after profoundest study of men 
and things, by some master intellect. . . . Erudite and 
scientific men, for their own convenience, have formed 
summaries, digests, abstracts of their knowledge, each 
sentence of which contains a thousand elements of truth 

lesson is not at all realized. I take as an instance a sentence selected at 
random from a well-known geography book for young children: *Rock 
salt abounds in . . . Cheshire, as do also salt springs, from which a vast 
quantity of salt is made by evaporation.' I have taken some pains to 
discover the concepts attached to this. There is generally but one in 
children's minds, — salt, the white powdery substance of peculiar taste, — 
table salt, in fact. 'Rock' salt conveys no idea whatever, and before the 
rest of the sentence can give the clear mental images which * understand- 
ing' implies, an elementary but clear knowledge of the phenomena of 
solution, rainfall, springs, evaporation, and of the crystalline nature of 
the substance are required. The whole of these make up the mixed con- 
cept formulated in the sentence quoted, and until these * apperceiving 
concepts' are formed there can be no grasp of the complex one. This is 
somewhat difficult to realize, but the study of children wiU convince any 
one who takes the necessary trouble that it is the fact." De Brath, " The 
Foundations of Success," pp. 66-67. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 217 

that have been mastered in detail; and, on inspection of 
these abbreviated forms, they are reminded of, not taught, 
the individual truths they contain. Yet these are given 
to children, as though they would call up in their minds 
the same ideas which they suggest to their authors." * 

It may be added here that the process of fusion between 
word and meaning is aided when the content has some 
vital connection with the life interests of the learner at 
the moment. Meaning-ideas which are not felt to be of 
value by the individual probably have a low degree of 
coalescing power. If fusion is to occur easily, there must 
be a certain degree of warmth in the content, if for no 
other reason, at least to give some impetus to master the 
symbol which may in the future reinstate the content. 
The tendency of the day to utilize fairy stories, folk tales, 
Mother Goose rhymes, "Hiawatha," some of the stories 
and poems of Field, Stevenson, and others, the " Peter 
Rabbit " and " Clean Peter " sort of stories, and also 
" Robin Hood," " Robinson Crusoe," etc., is along the 
right line. At the same time it should be recognized that 
the content of a reading-book can be made so novel and 
engrossing that it will, temporarily at any rate, secure 
most of the learner's attention, and he will make slight 
headway in mastering technique. In experiments made 
with a strikingly illustrated first reader, I found that V. 
would keep drifting away from the words to the pictures; 

' Hinsdale, "The Art of Study," p. 72. 



2l8 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

and whenever some activity was described in which he 
was supremely interested, he would tend to run off on a 
long story as to how he and his playmates performed it. 
In a case like this, feeling is aroused too strongly, and the 
perception of verbal forms is interfered with rather than 
promoted. 
Content Again, we cannot let the content determine altogether 

cannot 

determine the sequence and frequency of introducing new verbal 
Stroductfon ^orms to the pupil. Economy requires that we observe 
ide^*^*^" ^^^ principle of apperception in the gaining of verbal- 
as well as meaning-ideas. The words introduced to the 
learner at any time, should, so far as possible, be apper- 
ceivable on the side of technique by the words already 
mastered. This means that new word-ideas should not be 
taught without regard to those already acquired, even 
though in their meaning they may be entirely appropriate. 
And further, in order that a word may be learned economi- 
cally, it must in the first stages of learning be frequently 
experienced in connection with its content. When the 
learner attacks a word once this week, and then again once 
next week, and not again until the following week, each 
impression is likely to be obHterated before the succeeding 
one is received. Economy requires that impressions follow 
one another rapidly so that they may become cumulative, 
and gain force enough to leave permanent effects in mem- 
ory. At any rate, it is fatal to efficiency to be continually 
introducing strange words without having the pupil react 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 219 

on any of them frequently enough to acquire familiarity 
with them.^ 

2. Acquisition of Meaning by Definition 

The method of making new words inteUigible by learn- The pro- 

C6SS of 

ing the definitions of them given in the dictionary has al- learning 



ways occupied a prominent place in the teaching of reading. 
Now, it will be granted without argument probably that a 
new symbol may acquire meaning if it be linked with other 
symbols that are rightly understood. Gained in this man- 
ner, the new term, when seen, reinstates its associates, 
and through them it acquires a feeHng of familiarity. 
With repetition, the verbal mediators of the new term 
gradually subside, and for all practical purposes there is 
developed direct association between it and the meaning- 
idea; in effect the new term is substituted for its synonyms. 
But there are serious difficulties attending this method. 
Just now I hear a girl nine years of age defining "exertion." 
In her school she is given ten new words every day which 
she is to look up in the dictionary, and write out their defi- 
nitions. She finds in her dictionary that " exertion " means 
" strife, endeavor, strain." When she is asked to interpret 

^ Cf. Bryan and Harter, the Psych. Rev., January, 1897, Vol. IV, pp. 
27-53; and Jiily, 1899, Vol. VT, pp. 346-375. See, also, Swift, "Studies 
in the Psychology and Physiology of Learning " ; Reprint from Amer. 
Jour, of Psych., AprU, 1903, Vol. XIV, especially pp. 26-32; and "The 
Acquisition of Skill in Typewriting," Psych. Rev., August 15, 1904, pp. 
295-305- 



by defining. 



220 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

the terms used to define the strange word, she is confused. 
She has just a faint notion of what they signify; in one sense 
she is attempting to " define the unknown by the incom- 
prehensible." The difficulty here is not necessarily inher- 
ent in the method per se, but in the failure to employ it 
effectively. Any one at all familiar with the situation in 
our schools knows that much of what has been done under 
the head of definition in reading has been simply mechani- 
cal memorizing of series of words, no one of which was 
enriched with vital content. The dictionaries used by 
pupils are, according to my observations, open to serious 
objection, because they divest words of all the concrete 
accompaniments that would really make them intelligible 
to the learner.^ The adults who make the definitions com- 
prehend the terms they use, and they employ terms denot- 
ing the highest generalizations in the subjects treated; but 
they forget that the learner lacks the experiences which 
are essential to give these abstractions proper content.^ 

^ " The dictionary can be of service only where experience can inter- 
pret the dictionary. A child may learn from the dictionary that an em- 
peror is a monarch, or the head of an empire, but unless his experience has 
made him acquainted with the synonyms he is no wiser than before, — 
indeed, he may be all the more bewildered and perplexed from the very 
number of meaningless symbols. Those of us who were in the public 
schools twenty-five years ago will recall what a vast amount of time and 
enthusiasm was killed in worse than useless dictionary work in connection 
with reading and spelling." Chambers, op. ciL, p. 49. 

' To illustrate : a child of eight at my side reading in the paper comes 
to the word "warfare," and asks its meaning. The parent says it is 
" a combat between two nations." Both combat and nations are unknown 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 221 

Very brief definitions, so characteristic of children's The most 

. economical 

dictionaries, are apt to prove especially futile, since these method of 
require the use of the most abstract terms. In order that a S^^Sngs. 
novel word may acquire its true significance for the novice, 
situations in which it may be rightly employed and which 
grow out of his every-day experience must be given. The 
learner will gain the meaning of a new symbol most eco- 
nomically and effectively when he finds it often functioning 
in famiHar situations to which it properly relates. The 
dictionary method is at fault principally because it treats 
words as static, isolated things. Much reading, even if 
the meaning of every word is not entirely clear at the outset, 
but if the sense as a w^hole is rightly apprehended, leads in 
the end to the most effective mastery of meaning-ideas for 
visual word-ideas. Children, as soon as they begin read- 
ing for pleasure, become self-helpful in extending and cor- 
recting verbal meanings. Many words which H. at eight 
did not understand at all, as she met them in her reading, 
she can at nine give the meanings of with considerable 
accuracy and completeness; and her development in this 
respect has come about mainly through her spontaneous 
reading. She has not heretofore had training in construct- 
ing formal definitions. She has gained her meanings 
through the coalescence of various terms with situations 

terms to the child, and so he has been left just about where he was before 
he asked the question. Reading-books and dictionaries usually define 
terms in much the same unsatisfactory way. 



222 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

constituting the content of her reading. This content was 
determined in part by the pictures in her books and in part 
by the verbal forms, enough of which were understood in all 
books and selections to give general direction to the images 
and feelings awakened. 

As Chambers^ puts it, — " the best way to promote the 
growth of content in words is to allow the child to infer 
the meaning from the context. This is the way we all 
learn language in the beginning. Meanings come to us as 
babes in that way, long before we can utter their s3anbols, 
and any other method must be but a substitute for or an 
abbreviation of this. So long as the number of new words 
is small, and their use in the context is sufficiently varied, 
there will be little trouble for the pupil in getting the sense. 
For an alert teacher it is an easy matter by questions, varied 
illustrations, and informal but well-directed conversation 
to clear away any uncertainties that may arise in connection 
with the ordinary new word. The dictionary will give help, 
too, but must not be allowed to serve as a substitute for 
experience. The greatest difficulties will arise, of course, 
in the minds of pupils from uncultured homes where the 
daily conversation furnishes no assistance. For such the 
teacher can only increase her vigilance, extend her individ- 
ual attention, question and illustrate more fully, and most 
of all encourage them constantly in the reading of books 
that will quicken the growth retarded by home conditions.'' 
^ Op. cit., p. 50. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 223 

3. Oral ITS. "Silent" Reading 

The desirability of reacting to visual words subcon- simplifying 
sciously suggests a further question of method of teaching cesses in- 
which is of considerable importance. It has been sug- reacting^ 
gested that the reader who, wishing to gain the thought "P°° ^®^^^' 
from the printed page, lingers over the words in their 
technical aspects is apt to be turned aside from his real 
purpose to attend to mere verbal form. Now, the greater 
the nimiber of the modalities that are involved in reacting 
upon any word, the greater is the tendency of the word- 
idea to alone occupy the focus of consciousness. If the 
learner, upon seeing the word, audizes it distinctly and 
vocalizes it, there is danger of these processes monopolizing 
the attention. In reading, the auditory and vocal processes 
should be reduced to the minimum. In our teaching, 
however, we have to deal with the original tendency to in- 
terpret visual verbal forms through the correlated auditory 
and vocal forms; and we can in our methods make these 
latter processes very prominent or reduce them to a sub- 
ordinate place. When the child begins his reading he 
looks at the words and speaks them, and so establishes 
vocal-audito- visual- verbal-patterns. But these patterns 
comprise auditory and vocal in excess of visual elements; 
the tendency is for the former elements to become most 
prominent whenever the learner sees the word. As a 
matter of fact, young children mumble their lessons, even 



224 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

when commanded to " study to yourselves." If they be 
punished for " studying aloud," they will whisper as they 
read. They seem to be unable to master their tasks, which 
means in many schoolrooms to memorize them so as to give 
them back verbatim, unless the ear and vocal cords assist 
in the process. Further, the children I have tested, who 
have always read orally and who have whispered their 
lessons in learning them, seem unable to get the meaning 
from a passage unless they can say over the words. There 
appears to be no route from the visual verbal-idea to the 
meaning except through the auditory verbal and vocal ver- 
bal processes, which remain very conspicuous; although 
students like Franke ^ think it is possible to train one so he 
can go direct from the visual word to the idea. 

I have observed that in the case of children who are 
required to push ahead as rapidly as possible in getting 
the meaning of a paragraph " silently," the vocal processes 
appear to gradually diminish in prominence until in the end 
they disappear, so far as one can te 11,^5 extra. Of course, 
it is not probable that these processes are often if ever com- 
pletely short-circuited;^ they continue in a more or less 

* See his "Die Praktische Spracherlernung auf Grund der Psychologic 
und der Physiologie der Sprache," Leipzig, 1896, 3d edition. 

' Compare the following : " A purely visual reader is certainly not an 
impossibility, theoretically at least. The direct linking of visual form to 
ideas, cutting out of circuit the somewhat cumbrous and doubtless fatigu- 
ing audito-motorizing mechanism, would seem to be a consummation 
to be wished for, from some points of view. When the proper preliminary 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 22$ 

distinct condition as *' interior " speech/ But the prin- 
ciple is that with right training the visual verbal- idea may 
acquire the power to reinstate the meaning-idea as fully 
as is essential for understanding, and with very slight aid 
from the auditory or vocal factors.^ H. was originally a 
" lip-reader," as all children probably are at the start, 
but after a half-dozen years of training in " silent " read- 
ing, the visual verbal- idea, so far as I can make out, is the 
only prominent technical element in the process. It 
seems likely that the effort to read rapidly will itself force 
a way from the visual verbal- idea to the meaning, reducing 
the prominence of all intermediate factors. On the other 

investigation of the reading-process has been made, this will be one of 
the most important subjects of pedagogical consideration. Practically, 
however, I have not found the purely visual type." Huey, op. cit., p. 297. 
See, in this connection, Secor, Amer. Journ. of Psych., Vol. XI, p. 225, 
who says he has found some readers who are apparently pure visuels. 

* The literature on this topic is quite extensive, but see, especially, 
Collins, loc. cit. ; Elder, loc. cit. ; Ballet, " Le Langue Interieur " ; Strieker, 
op. cit.; Egger, "La Parole Int^rieure"; Janet, Revue Philosophiquey 
November, 1892; Baldwin, "Mental Development in the Child and the 
Race, Methods and Processes," Chap. XIV; Wylie, "The Disorders 
of Speech"; Lichtheim, "Aphasia," Brain, January, 1885; Jastrow, 
"Speech and its Defects," Diet, of Phil, and Psych., Vol. II, pp. 569- 
579; Breese, "On Inhibition," Psych. Rev., Vol. Ill, and Monograph 
Supplement. 

^ I have tested myself in this matter for a number of years, and I am 
confident that even an adult can train himself to push from the visual 
word or phrase to its meaning without giving much place to the auditory 
and vocal elements. I can do this more effectively now than I could a 
decade ago. 
Q 



226 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT A2^ EDUCATION 

hand, slow oral reading from the beginning will probably 
give the auditory and vocal elements marked prominence 
in the reading process. 
In reading. Modern experiment has shown, I think, that individuals 

eye-minded- 

ness must who rely upon the eye chiefly in their reading forge ahead 
vated. more rapidly than those who depend to a large extent upon 

the ear and the lips for their cue in making out meaning. 
At the same time, the rapid readers gain the thought more 
completely and effectively than the slow ones. Experi- 
ments made by Quantz tend to prove the statement 
here made.^ In comparing rapid and slow readers, he 
says: "The degree in which the rapid readers excel the 
slow in eye-mindedness can perhaps best be understood 
by a comparison of the extreme classes. The * very slow ' 
readers (3.9 words per second) reproduce 89.1 per cent as 
much of the visual selection as of the auditory, while the 
* very rapid ' readers (7.3 words per second) are able to 
recall 123.2 of visual for every 100 of auditory; that is, 
the ratio of reading rates between slowest and fastest read- 
ers is 3.9 to 7.3 (1:1.87), while the ratio of the visual 
tendency as compared with the auditory is 89.1 to 123.2 
(1:1.38). On the principle of correlations this result 
shows eye-mindedness to be a rather strong factor in the 
determination of reading rates. 

" It might be supposed that greater rapidity was gained 

* However, Secor, loc. ciL, thinks audition and articulation may be of 
some aid in reading, though they are not absolutely essential. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 227 

at the sacrifice of exactness or of intelligence. This suppo- 
sition is negatived by an examination of the amount and 
quantity of the material reproduced. A comparison be- 
tween the ten most rapid readers and the ten slowest shows 
that the rapid readers remember more of the original 
thoughts, and that the character of their reproduction is 
much higher, both generally and with reference to expres- 
sion and to logical content. In the auditory tests the ratio 
of slow to rapid readers is 14.8 per cent to 20.7 per cent in 
the number of thoughts. In quality the percentages are 
47.8 for slow readers, 60.3 for fast. The same comparison 
in the visual tests results as follows : percentage of thoughts 
reproduced by slow readers, 14.9; by rapid, 24.4. Qual- 
ity: slow, 48 per cent; rapid, 73.3 per cent. The difference 
in favor of the ' rapids ' is consequently much greater 
than in the auditory tests, indicating again that rapid 
readers are, as a rule, of the visual type. . . . 

"To emphasize this relation a comparison of extremes 
might be shown as follows: the ten slowest readers show 
almost double the amount of lip-movement that the ten 
most rapid do. Or again, determining rate by means of 
lip-movement, we have: the ten most decided lip-movers 
read 4.1 words per second; that is, they are between the 
classes ' slow ' and ' very slow,' and nearer to the latter; 
while the ten who show least movement of lips read 5.6 
words per second, — very close to an average ' rapid.' " * 

^ Quantz, Psychological Review, Vol. II, pp. 28, 38. 



228 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

It seems highly important, then, to develop in the pupil 
the habit of reading rapidly all ordinary literature, getting 
his cue as to meaning principally through the eye.^ In or- 
der to accomplish this most effectively, he must be got into 
the way as soon as possible of regarding all the technique 
of reading as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. 
He should not esteem technical accuracy too highly, so 
that he will accord it too much attention. In revealing 
what he gets from his reading he should often be required 
to do the thing which is suggested rather than to express 
it in words merely. The prime test of successful reading, 
instead of being correct pronunciation, must be ready and 
appropriate action denoted by the reading. If the pupil 

^ I realize that oral reading should not be wholly neglected ; but in 
modem life visual reading is of supreme importance, and should always 
receive chief attention. I may quote, with approval for the most part, 
the following from Lewis : — 

" One of the quickest ways of learning to know good English is oral 
reading. It is an invaluable habit to read aloud every day upon some 
piece of prose with the finest feeling the reader can lend to it. In no other 
way can one so easily learn to notice and to remember new words. In 
no other way can one catch the infinitely varied rhythm of prose, and 
acquire a sense of how a good sentence rises gradually from the begin- 
ning and then descends in a cadence. This rise and fall of the sentence 
is not merely a matter of voice ; it is a matter of thought as well. Simi- 
larly, the law of unity in the sentence, a law which prescribes what shall 
constitute a complete thought, is curiously bound up with the laws of the 
human voice. A clause that is too long to be pronounced in a single breath 
is usually clumsy in logic. Furthermore, it is the best means of detecting 
those useless repetitions which betray poverty of vocabulary." E. H. Lewis, 
"A First Book in^writing English," p. 12. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 229 

does not respond in appropriate action to what he reads, 
or does not show that he has correctly comprehended it as 
he describes it, then we may lead him to the precise point 
where the difficulties occur and help him. In this way 
the learner grows constantly in the power of rapid inter- 
pretation, which requires the ready grasping of large 
verbal units in one pulse of visual attention, without giv- 
ing unnecessary factors a chance to make themselves 
felt appreciably. When one reads for the purpose of pro- 
nunciation mainly, there is no incentive to make progress 
in rapid interpretation; indeed, continual oral reading is 
likely to prevent the ready fusion of elementary into larger 
and larger units. 

1. The problem in teaching reading is to secure in the most Summary. 
economical and effective manner coalescence between word- 

and meaning-ideas. 

2. Word- and meaning-ideas coalesce most readily under 
temporal and adjustive conditions, whereby symbols and the 
content they denote are experienced together, and the learner 
appreciates that the content is of value, and the symbols will 
aid him to secure it in future adjustments. 

3. For the novice it is best that content should not be focal, 
but only marginal in consciousness when word-ideas are being 
acquired. However, when the symbols concern content out- 
side the experience of the learner, it is essential that they should 
both become focal in learning. 

4. One who has acquired reading in the most effective 
manner does not ordinarily have meaning-ideas focal in con- 



230 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

sciousness as he reads, but he could make them focal should the 
occasion require it. 

5. Word-ideas must not be learned unless they can at the 
time of learning fuse with interesting and well-integrated con- 
tent. 

6. However, the introduction of word-ideas cannot be de- 
termined in all respects by the requirements of content. New 
symbols must be apperceivable on the side of form by symbols 
already mastered; and they must be frequently repeated in 
different contexts until they can be reacted upon auto- 
matically. 

7. In the past, teachers required pupils when attacking 
new words to learn the definitions of them found in the dic- 
tionary. But often the terms used in the definitions were no 
better understood than the terms to be defined, and so no prog- 
ress was made in learning. 

8. The learner will acquire the meaning of a new symbol 
most economically and effectively when he finds it often func- 
tioning in a variety of familiar situations to which it properly 
relates. 

9. It may perhaps prove of service to the learner to become 
acquainted with the dictionary definition of a term, after he 
has seen the term functioning in different contexts. But this 
must always come after, not before, he has had experience 
with the term in its functional aspect. 

10. The greater the number of the modalities that are in- 
volved in reacting upon any word, the greater is the tendency 
of the word-idea alone to absorb the attention, and so to defeat 
the end of reading. Therefore, we should employ methods 
which will reduce the auditory and vocal processes to a mini- 
mum, or eliminate them altogether if possible. The learner 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEANING IN READING 231 

should freely be required to push ahead and get the content of 
his reading through the eye with the slightest possible aid from 
audition and vocalization. Eye-mindedness is of special service 
in reading. 



CHAPTER X 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 



I. Efficiency as Special, not General 



Profound 
thought 
butduU 
expression. 



Doubtless every reader can count among his ac- 
quaintances persons who on certain occasions speak in a 
halting and ineffective manner, and yet who may be gram- 
matically correct in all their utterances. The writer enjoys 
the friendship of a learned professor who is ill-at-ease in 
social gatherings, mainly because he cannot employ effec- 
tive expressions readily enough to keep abreast of lively 
conversation. He is a man of profound thought in his 
specialty, and facile with his pen in his own field; but 
when he confronts a company of men and women in a 
drawing-room, discussing in a racy manner matters of gen- 
eral interest, he becomes confused and unduly restrained. 
He is usually desirous of presenting his views on the subjects 
under discussion, but his ideas do not embody themselves 
in appropriate terms speedily enough for the occasion. 
And when he does attempt to express himself on such occa- 
sions, he does not make a deep impression, for his talk seems 
rather academic and " heavy," though every one realizes 

232 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 233 

that it is probably " sane." His expression lacks " bright- 
ness," " cleverness," " brilliancy." It is devoid of the 
peculiar figures and effective phrasing v^hich character- 
ize the speech of the majority of the company. People 
commenting upon this man's behavior in the drawing-room 
remark that " he does not know what to say "; but he is 
not thus afflicted in his laboratory, or when he is discussing 
scientific matters with his colleagues. 

It is a fact of simple observation that an individual is Efficiency 

, , _. . . ....... limited to 

rarely easy and effective m every Imguistic situation m special situ- 
which he may be placed. A student may be ready and 
entirely successful in his linguistic efforts on the athletic 
field or in any company of athletes, but dull and incompe- 
tent in the class room; and the converse may be true as 
well, a fact which is illustrated in the case of the typical col- 
lege instructor. Again, a man who follows the race-track is 
likely to have fulness and richness of speech when he talks 
of matters pertaining thereto, though when he finds him- 
self among university people he may be speechless, or at 
least extremely commonplace. The principle is clear : the 
horseman has at his tongue's end the terms and phrases 
which are effective among racing men; but the language of 
a faculty gathering is in a measure a foreign tongue to him. 
Then, what is more important, he has, in the environment 
of the race-track, overcome the inhibitions which usually 
retard reaction, whether linguistic or otherwise, in every 
situation which is unfamiliar; and this indicates why he 



234 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

is awkward, static, and ineffective in speech when he 
enters the university circle. Now, to turn about, a pro- 
fessor may be very fluent in his class room, but backward 
and commonplace in his linguistic reactions at the race- 
track. Further, he may understand, in a way, all the terms 
used at the latter place, and he may be able to use them 
easily in his own room; but when the test comes of using 
them with right and telling effect at the crucial moment, 
he may find himself quite unequal to the occasion. At the 
race-track there are peculiar stimuli impinging upon him 
which he never experiences in his study; but the habitue 
has responded often to these stimuli in such a way as to 
utilize the energy which they set free in appropriate lin- 
guistic as well as other reactions. The latter can talk 
most fluently when he is in the midst of things at the track; 
whereas the college specialist is likely to become tongue- 
tied under similar conditions. The varied peculiar im- 
pressions distract him; being novel, they force themselves 
in unrelated connections upon his attention; he does not 
know what is vital and what merely incidental. Some 
stimuli incite a certain line of action and expression; 
while others stimulate something. different; and as a result 
he may not react positively in any direction, for the tenden- 
cies toward reaction may neutralize one another, and leave 
him static. 

The principle is universal in its appHcation; a man is 
effective linguistically in those situations, and those only; 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 235 

in which he has been often placed, and in reaction upon 
which he has been constantly urged, by force of circum- 
stances, to express himself readily and to the point. To be 
able to express one's self effectively in the quiet of the study 
does not insure fluency and efficiency on the platform, on 
the street, or in the reception hall; though it is a common 
belief that a " man of learning " can express himself read- 
ily on all occasions. During school life, it is often the case 
that an awkward, blundering linguist in the class room 
is a past-master in the speech of the street. On the other 
hand, one who sees much of group life among the young 
knows that not infrequently boys and girls who are always 
ready in their classes, and rarely need assistance or cor- 
rection in their language, are wholly at a loss to know what 
to say in the give-and-take experiences of the playground. 
Again, children who may be very '' proper " in the drawing- 
room, and capable of assisting their mothers in entertaining 
guests, may be quite incompetent when they are placed 
with aggressive companions who are expressing themselves 
regardless of the conventions of adult life. The writer 
has among his acquaintances several men who are very 
fluent and effective on the lecture platform before a large 
audience, but they are quite commonplace before a small 
group of acquaintances, and they are not at all ready in 
general conversation in a mixed company. They seem 
to require the stimulus of large numbers, where individuali- 
ties are obliterated, in order that they may be linguistically 



236 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Efficiency 
due in a 
measure to 
native en- 
dowment. 



free and forceful. The principle in question might be 
illustrated at great length by instances drawn from all sorts 
and conditions of people. 

2. The Essential Factor in the Development of Efficiency 

Looking now at the developmental course in attaining 
efficiency, we must note at the outset that it is without doubt 
the product of original nature in some part, though to what 
extent it seems impossible to determine exactly in individual 
cases. H., V., S., and K. have been reared under similar 
linguistic conditions and training, except that those last 
named have had the advantage of association from the 
beginning with the older ones. But V. lagged behind the 
others in linguistic ability, though he was always superior 
in general motor skill; S., two years his junior, outstripped 
him in linguistic development, and K. was farther along at 
three years than V. at six years. V. never could recall new 
words as readily as the others. " I forget its name," he 
often would say, in speaking of objects with which one 
would expect him to be quite familiar; or *' I cannot think 
of that word you used." He does not seem to be verbal- 
minded, as his sisters and brother are; but their excel- 
lence in this respect cannot be due to any extraordinary 
linguistic experiences which they have had beyond him. 
A child's temperament, whether he be socially inclined or 
not, whether he be joyous or morose, and so on, will, of 
course, react upon his linguistic activities and abilities. 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 237 

One whose temperament keeps him away from people, or 
keeps him silent in their presence, does not need to acquire 
great linguistic skill, since language serves the sole purpose 
of facilitating communication. 

It is a matter of tradition that "gift of gab" runs with 
the blood. It is said to be a trait common to the Irish 
and the French, but not so characteristic of either the 
Germans or the English. It is probable that racial pecul- 
iarities in this respect have been unduly magnified; and 
yet there is doubtless some truth in the common saying. 
So far as one can tell from observations of pupils in the 
schools, however, these peculiarities do not manifest them- 
selves to any marked extent in children of foreign parentage 
who have been born in America, and reared under similar 
conditions with American children in home, school, and 
community; except as differences in home opportunities 
and home training will produce characteristit results in 
the linguistic ability of different children. But this ought 
not to be regarded as a matter of racial, but only of social, 
inheritance. For some years I have studied the linguistic 
abihties of a group of children, watching them grow in 
fluency and efficiency from year to year, and I am confident 
no one could tell the national antecedents of any of them 
simply from the manner in which they express themselves. 
I have observed, however, that certain foreign-born parents 
tend to perpetuate in their homes in our community the 
methods of training children in their native country, and 



238 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

this has a characteristic effect upon the linguistic develop- 
ment of the young. To illustrate, a certain father, from 
one of the North of Europe countries, believes his children 
should keep quiet, listening instead of talking; and these 
children are not as ready linguistically as most of their 
associates. Again, an Irish father and mother, whose 
tongues are very agile, and who are distinguished for 
" Hiberniap wit," have stimulated all their children lin- 
guistically, for they are engaged in linguistic play with 
them much of the time. However, if the children from 
these two homes were removed from their parents before 
they entered the linguistic period, and brought up in a 
New England Yankee home, there is no evidence to show 
conclusively that they would reveal national differences 
in linguistic ability. 
Effective Turning now to the factors in experience which deter- 

in group ac- mine linguistic efficiency, the general principle may be 
firsfrequi- enunciated, mainly in view of what has been said in pre- 
^^*®- vious chapters, that the child will grow in ability in just 

the measure that he is made to feel the necessity for effec- 
tive expression in a variety of typical situations. When 
the doctrine that a child should be seen and not heard is 
enforced by parent and teacher, the individual will gain 
comparatively slowly in expressive power. It is probable 
that, as a rule, the first-born in a family develops linguis- 
tically with less momentum and also less achievement 
than those who come after him, although native endow- 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 239 

ment may in some cases play a more important part than 
superior linguistic opportunity. Country children are 
usually much behind city children of their age in readiness, 
effectiveness, and range of expression. University stu- 
dents coming from rural communities are at a disadvantage, 
compared with city-bred students, in general expressive 
power, though they may excel in the formal recitation work 
of the class room. The evidence (which might be cited at 
great length) is conclusive to the effect that if a child comes 
in contact with but few individuals, and has little to say 
to even these few, he will have sHght chance of becoming 
efficient, except in very special sorts of situations. To 
illustrate the principle by a case which the writer has 
studied, if the child converses almost wholly with his 
grandmother, his linguistic ability will be determined by 
her peculiar reaction upon his expressions. He will de- 
velop efficiency in the particular kind of expressive means 
which she approves, and which her personality incites. If, 
on the other hand, he has not only the grandmother, 
but his father, mother, brothers and sisters, the minister 
and teacher, and numerous playfellows — then his oppor- 
tunities and his necessities will be far greater than in the 
first instance, and his skill in expression, supposing he has 
average native power, will be immensely extended and per- 
fected. Each person with whom he has vital inter- 
course will stimulate characteristic qualities of expression. 
One can note this principle operating constantly in child- 



240 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

hood. An observing parent can often tell at night, simply 
from the general character of the conversation, with what 
persons his children have spent the day. 

The peculiar terms used in one's talk, the rapidity of 
utterance, volume of voice, idiomatic expressions, and so 
on, are all determined to some degree by particular social 
groups. A neutral or taciturn companion, either in child- 
hood or in youth, will not call forth sharp, definite, rich 
and swift-moving expression from those who fraternize 
with him. On the other hand, if the learner has compan- 
ions who are far ahead of him in linguistic skill, he may not 
be able to react at all, and so he holds back and lets the 
other fellow do all the talking. V., at the age of five, ac- 
quired just such a playfellow, with whom he did little but 
listen, for he apparently realized that he was entirely out- 
classed. A child must associate with those of about his 
own attainments, where give-and-take, competitive relations 
may exist, in order that he may grow in expressive ability, 
for this results in pressure being brought to bear on him 
constantly to make his speech go directly to the point. 
Competition is as essential to the Hfe and development of 
expression in the individual as it is to any other form of 
activity. This is doubtless why children make rapid lin- 
guistic headway when they are much together, engaged in 
spirited, vital play. H., as an example, gains more in 
linguistic power from her relations with her playmates 
than she does from the formal exercises of the school, or 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 24I 

even from her reading, or from her conversation with her 
elders. With her playmates the new interests coming into 
her life from time to time are worked over linguistically 
in a great variety of ways, and with a spirit and skill that 
she does not exhibit quite so markedly at other times. In 
phylogenesis, language was developed to facilitate group 
activities, and it seems to require group relations to de- 
velop it in the individual. 

3. Development of Efficiency through the General 
Activities of the School 

The school seems to be deficient in the matter of effective The short- 
linguistic training, if the opinions of many critics of the thrschooi 
day are entitled to consideration. We are hearing it said ^J^g^^^^ 
by many careful observers that the school fails to meet the 
first requirement for the cultivation of effective expression, 
since pupils are put into seats, and commanded to keep 
quiet. Their learning consists in memorizing lessons which 
they render back verbatim in the recitation. There is little 
chance for spontaneity or originality in such a regime. In 
the language period the child's experience is formal and 
mechanical. It is claimed by the critics that this training 
is quite remote from the situations that are encountered 
most frequently in daily life. The pupil in a formal reci- 
tation is really not expressing himself; he is reciting the 
thing he has learned, and which is more or less unrelated 
to his present thoughts, activities, and interests. Under 



242 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Linguistic 
training 
in all the 
studies of 
the school. 



a regimen of this character, he does not come into such 
vital give-and-take relations with his teacher and his class- 
mates as must exist between himself and his fellows in real 
life. In brief, the class-room situations are not close enough 
to those which will be presented outside, so that experience 
in the one will be of material help in the other. Again, the 
pupil who in the school is exercised in formal declamation 
is not gaining experience which will be of much service to 
him when he is called upon to address his fellows upon 
some subject of immediate interest; one sees good de- 
claimers, according to prevailing standards, of other peo- 
ple's thoughts, who make bad work of expressing their 
own thoughts, such as they are. 

We are here considering mainly the influence of the 
school in the development of linguistic power in its general 
activities, and not in its special " language- work " ; and 
a further word must be added before this topic is aban- 
doned. " Every subject should furnish opportunity for 
language- training " is a phrase heard very frequently now 
in educational conventions. Teachers are becoming con- 
vinced that ability in expression cannot be influenced 
greatly by a few minutes' special training each day, if it is 
neglected on other occasions. And how are teachers put- 
ting the new principle into effect? Apparently they are 
interpreting it to require that in all studies they should cor- 
rect the more common grammatical errors, and they should 
give some attention to what may be called logical or formal 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 243 

clearness in expression. In the prosecution of this aim, 
pupils are often held to stereotyped forms which lack the 
freshness, fire, and vigor of every- day expression when the 
current of thought moves swiftly. Of course, much de- 
pends upon the teacher and the spirit of the recitation, no 
matter what may be the theory followed. One may see 
schoolrooms in which there is a richness of Hfe which cannot 
be contained by formal, mechanical expression. In such 
places pupils grow rapidly and strongly in linguistic abihty, 
as they do in all other respects. 

One may gain a valuable lesson from a study of the in- 
fluence of school training upon the vocabulary and general 
expressive ability of a child when he enters upon a new 
study, as geography, for instance. If one asks of such a 
pupil formal geographical questions, he may get formal 
answers; but this is not to say that geographical study 
has added to the pupil's linguistic equipment for the situa- 
tions of every-day life. This is doubtless due to the fact 
that geographical study generally exerts little influence 
upon the pupil's spontaneous thought, and so there is no 
demand for the geographical type of expression. But 
when geography is presented in a concrete, vital manner, 
and is made a subject for free and ready discussion among 
pupils, we find them taking it up in their play activities, 
when geographical terms and phrases appear in their spon- 
taneous expressions. The same sort of thing happens in 
principle in respect to all the school studies when they are 



244 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

brought close to the pupil's life, and wrought into the body 
of his every-day thought and feeling. In each study the 
teacher, at the right moment, when the pupil is striving to 
express himself effectively, supplies terms which may 
amplify deficient vocabularies; and the teacher also sug- 
gests correct inflection and syntax in the place of faulty 
forms, doing this, of course, in an incidental way, for the 
most part. This is precisely the way children grow lin- 
guistically outside the school; and the pupil's nature does 
not change the moment he crosses the threshold of the 
class room. When children discuss their studies freely, 
each profits by the most effective expressions of all the 
others. It does not take any particular child long to per- 
ceive, or rather to feel^ what varieties of expression are the 
most potent, what style of discourse hits the mark oftenest. 
A wise teacher will aid her class in appraising various forms 
of expression by making the best of them conspicuous in one 
way or another. She may say, " John, I like the way 
you said that; say it again, so that all may hear it.'* Or, 
" Children, which of these expressions seems the best to 
you?" and so on ad libitum. Under such conditions, 
pupils are in an attitude to seize with avidity upon any 
linguistic modes or forms that will aid them in making their 
own expressions stronger; and when they are in need, and 
realize it, is the psychological moment in which to offer 
them the thing that will be of help to them.^ 

^ We appear to be improving constantly in the direction of making 
our language-training less formal. For one thing, we are abandoning 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 245 

The adoption of the topical method of recitation, in the 
higher grades especially, but in all grades to some extent, 
will contribute much toward effective language-training. 
By this method the teacher can, in the manner indicated 
above, aid the pupil continually in enriching his vocabu- 
lary. And what is of even greater importance, perhaps, 
the pupil may in this way acquire the habit of expressing 
himself at some length in an orderly, connected fashion, 
instead of in a scrappy, disjointed manner. When the 
pupil never uses but a single sentence at a time in the 
class room, he cannot be said to be making much linguistic 
headway, for in the situations of life something more is 
demanded than mono-sentential expression. And then, 
connected expression exerts a direct influence upon con- 
nectedness in thought. The two grow pari passu. You 

the give-it-to-me-in-a-complete-sentence philosophy. We once thought 
the use of the complete sentence was essential to the development of 
linguistic ability, but we see now that to constantly insist upon it may arrest 
growth in the ready use of language. It may exalt linguistic formality, 
and differentiate the language of the schoolroom from the language of 
daily life. We are beginning to realize, it seems, that when the pupil has 
something to talk about that requires the use of complete sentences if 
any headway is made, he will employ them without fail. I have known 
children, whose range of expression met adequately the needs of varied 
and rich experience, to enter the primary school, and be held up con- 
stantly in their efforts at expression because they would not say, " I 
have a pencil" in response to the question, "What have you?" One 
might suppose the teacher thought the child had never used sentences, 
and she must develop them de novo. This is the sort of work that has 
made the linguistic training of the school more or less valueless, and 
possibly even detrimental. 



246 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

can encourage orderly, related thinking by demanding 
orderly, related expression, a principle which has not been 
sufficiently appreciated by teachers in the past. 



The 

methods 
employed 
in the 
schools. 



4. Development of Efficiency through the Study of 
Linguistic Forms 

In most schools to-day the pupil from the very begin- 
ning is put through exercises wherein he talks for the 
purpose solely of perfecting his abihty in talking. The 
aim in this work in some schools, though not in all, is to 
encourage the learner to express himself with reference 
to situations and experiences which are closely related to 
those presented in the home, on the playground, and on 
the street. A common method, typical in fundamental 
principle of other methods, is to choose a picture represent- 
ing some interesting and familiar scene or event, either 
actual or in representation, and have conversation respect- 
ing it. Again, pupils are read or told stories, and they 
are required to reproduce them " in their own words." 
The concern of both teacher and pupil in this activity is 
mainly with linguistic forms. The attention of the pupil 
is not kept primarily on the picture he is describing, or 
story he is telling, or circumstance he is relating, but on 
the language he is using. However, there are some 
teachers who proceed on the doctrine that if a child will 
only talk about a topic — any topic — he will grow in 
linguistic power ; the vocabulary and idioms of the original 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 247 

will work themselves into his expression, even without his 
being aware of what is happening. 

While granting the educational value of the general 
principle in question, still it may be carried to an extreme. 
In previous chapters it has been shown that the young 
child mechanically appropriates much of what he gains 
linguistically, and older children will readily assimilate 
the striking terms and phrases, occurring in the speech of 
their associates; but much of what is characteristic in 
construction and style of what we call the best literature 
will be missed unless attention be drawn specially thereto. 
I read " Robin Hood," as an instance, to three children, 
from five to ten. They all catch at a few such terms as 
*' landlubber" and such phrases as "Ho, my merry men !" 
and these get incorporated into their spontaneous talk, 
really becoming a part of their linguistic outfit, especially 
if I repeat the story a half-dozen times at intervals of six 
months or so, and if the use of these terms and phrases 
produces happy results in the responses of the people in 
the environment. But the youngest child appropriates 
just a few of these impressive expressions (we will later try 
to discover what about a term or phrase makes it impres- 
sive to children in different stages of development), while 
the oldest seizes upon some of the hero's more compli- 
cated expressions. And yet, if I do not direct their 
attention to special constructions and the more subtle 
phrases, their reproductions are quite largely in terms 



248 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of their habitual forms. However, if I urge them to 
recall just how Robin expressed himself when he was 
asked this or that question, or was placed in this or that 
situation, I can get them, particularly the oldest, to repro- 
duce a considerable part of the original, and without its 
seeming formal or remote to them. Now I go on and 
" make up '' a story with some of the terms and expres- 
sions of "Robin Hood" in it, and ask the children to tell it 
back, and I get more or less spontaneously many of the 
expressions of the original. I continue, and have the 
children tell me a story " like 'Robin Hood,'" and now 
they take the initiative in the use of the expressions in 
question. If in the progress of the story I ask, when 
certain expressions are given, " How would Robin say 
it? " and " Which do you Hke better? " I arouse a sense 
of one method of statement being more desirable than 
another, 
study and Now, I could if I chosc make the pupil's awareness of 
tary pro- special forms so acute that he would be hindered in using 
^^^^' them as means of expressing his own thought; he could 

only think about them. It is a subtle matter to determine 
just how far to carry this explicit study of modes of expres- 
sion; but for our present purpose we may state this general 
principle, — that the pupil should study particular terms 
and phrases only that he may use them in helping himself 
in making his own expression effective; and the oppor- 
tunity for and need of using them must follow immediately 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 249 

upon his study of them. Thus, explicit study and use 
must be but phases of a unitary process in all effective 
linguistic training. 

From what has been said it will be apparent that the The merits 
command, so often heard in the schoolroom, ''Tell it in ©f "Tell 
your own words," has its defects as well as its merits. o\ra words/ 
If it is carried out strictly, the pupil will not gain appre- 
ciably from his study of literature or anything else. Growth 
linguistically requires constant additions to the vocabulary 
from every subject studied, and every good book read; 
and there must be continual enlargement of the stock of 
linguistic moulds in which thought may be cast. But if 
the pupil is urged too strenuously to " use his own words," 
he gradually settles into very narrow linguistic grooves 
from which it becomes ever increasingly difficult to escape. 
The Hnguistic equipment of the pupil should be in a 
plastic state. There must be no arrest on primitive forms, 
except in respect to the very simplest constructions. 

But there is virtue in the command, " Tell it in your own 
words," if it be construed wisely. It should mean that 
the pupil, while making use of some of the author's terms 
and idioms, perhaps, yet employs them in a combination 
of his own making, which shows that he has used them 
intelligently, and that he can take them out of their origi- 
nal setting and employ them appropriately. And this is 
just what will prove of particular service to him. If he 
imitates the model, not only in respect to terms and 



250 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

phrases, but also in respect to constructive patterns, he 

can gain little if any power in the use in new settings of 

any of his model's expressions. It is much as if he learned 

7 X 9 = 63 always in a series, beginning with 7x1 = 7, 

and running on down. In order to determine 7 x 9 at 

any time, he must start at the beginning and go through 

the whole series. So the doctrine is that the learner must 

always gain something from his models, but he must work 

over what he gets into the warp and woof of his own 

expression. He must neither copy slavishly nor yet " use 

his own words " exclusively. 

The influ- The principle in question has validity at every point in 

models linguistic evolution, though here, as elsewhere, matters 

decHn^^ become more complicated as development proceeds. It 

after ado- normally becomes ever more difficult with development 

lescence. ^ 

to trace the influence of any particular model upon the 
forms of expression of the individual, though in some 
cases it is always quite apparent. Literary men, as 
Howells, for instance, tell us that every new author they 
read during a certain period in their literary history had 
an immediate and marked influence upon their expression, 
oral as well as written. But it is generally true, it seems, 
that as the range of one's linguistic ability is extended, 
as the body of one's expressive forms and materials in- 
creases, it constantly gains in solidarity, so that new models 
meet with ever-increasing resistance in their attempts to 
establish themselves in the expression of the learner. Or 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 251 

perhaps it is that the individual's needs are supplied ever 
more fully by his increasing linguistic outfit. This state- 
ment must be made with considerable reservation, for 
there are certainly exceptions to it. Mature men of literary 
and oratorical tendencies and ambitions are often en- 
hungered for new and better modes of revealing them- 
selves; they crave greater amplitude and precision and 
delicacy in their expression, and they seize eagerly upon 
everything that promises to aid them. Such persons are 
always in need; they are actively seeking for the means of 
becoming more fluent, and so they gain some profit from 
all their experience with things linguistic. At the same 
time, while they may appreciate the worth of new terms 
and phrases and linguistic moulds, still these may only 
with great difiiculty become embodied in their own expres- 
sion, so tenacious are early formed linguistic habits. 

It is the practice in many localities in our day to aban- Linguistic 
don all special exercises in the high school for developing the second- 
fluency in oral expression. So it happens that the only ^^^ 
training in this respect the pupil has is gained incidentally 
in connection with his work in his regular studies. It 
hardly requires argument to show that under such con- 
ditions unusual pains should be taken to encourage high- 
school pupils to express themselves freely and to the point 
in every recitation. Unhappily, though, formalism is more 
prominent in the high school to-day than it is in the 
elementary school, speaking generally. The writer has 



252 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

followed the course of certain students who manifested 
much freedom in expression in the elementary school, 
but who are becoming reticent in the high school. Doubt- 
less this reticence is due in some measure to the on-coming 
of adolescent self-consciousness, which induces inhibition; 
but it is due in largest measure probably to the defective 
methods of the high school. They often do not, in the 
course of the entire school day, utter five consecutive sen- 
tences on any topic, and what they say seems more or 
less formal, because the tone of the school is formal and 
mechanical. University instructors complain because the 
secondary school sends to them pupils dumb of tongue 
as well as of pen. They sit in their class rooms speech- 
less, and often one can get little from them more elaborate 
than " yes," or " no," or '' I am not prepared." To 
stand on their feet and tell what they know connectedly 
on any topic is difficult if not impossible for the majority 
of them, a defect which is always aggravated by static 
methods of teaching. 

In this connection it may be remarked that in the high 
school and university the individual will gain more in 
expressive ability from debating societies and the like, if 
not conducted in too formal a way, than he can gain from 
any amount of purely theoretical class-room instruction. 
If the class room and the debating and similar work could 
go hand in hand, we should realize the ideal at this stage 
of development, for the explicit study would supply models 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 253 

or forms which, from the experience in the society, would 
be felt to be of genuine worth. When the student reaches 
this point, he is ready to appropriate whatever he can get, 
and to speedily incorporate it into his spontaneous as well 
as his deliberate expression. 

5. Effect of Reading upon Efficiency 

The main point to be noted about reading in reference Reading 

, . . , - , . brings ver- 

to our present mquiry is that it is the means of making baieie- 
the pupil focally conscious of linguistic details which, focai^tten- 
through one modality, — audition, — he has come to react ^*®°- 
upon in generalized form and in an automatic manner. 
When he hears his companion say, " I have a knife," the 
words as separate elements are not at all focal in con- 
sciousness; they are apprehended and reacted upon as a 
unity, and the situation which they describe occupies the 
attention almost if not quite exclusively. This principle 
has been worked out elsewhere, and need not be dwelt 
upon here. But when the pupil begins to read the sen- 
tence, the elements, as mere word-ideas, monopolize his 
attention, and the situation they describe is not focal in 
consciousness, as would be the case in oral communica- 
tion. With development, however, symbol and meaning 
will change positions in consciousness; the latter will be 
brought forward, and the former will become gradually 
subordinated. 
At the outset the novice is engaged primarily with the 



254 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



It soon 
becomes 
more com- 
plex than 
speech. 



elementary units of the sentence as independent things, 
and he is not at all aware of their grammatical relationship. 
When he comes to such an expression as " the horse runs," 
he endeavors to master it so that he may in the future 
pronounce it when he sees it. His attention is concerned 
with the visual and vocal characteristics of the words as 
separate one from the other. But as he gains familiarity 
with the individual words so that he can pronounce them, 
not as wholly isolated but as related to one another in 
sequence, he begins to feel syntactical relations, or at 
least to establish them in his vocal processes. He does 
not become explicitly aware of the inflection of the verb 
in agreement with the subject, and yet vocally he renders 
it correctly. If this process be repeated many times, it 
tends, of course, to become habitual. In other words, the 
correct construction becomes fixed in execution, though 
not in definition or reflection; but this observance of the 
principle of agreement in vocal rendering will later 
be made the basis for apprehension of the principle in 
reflection. 

This is not to say that every sentence the child reads 
becomes established in vocal habit as correct grammatical 
construction and effective expression, which will exert 
an influence upon his spontaneous linguistic activity. 
There is likely to be, in the reading of the average eight- 
year-old child, say, a considerable proportion of the con- 
structions which will be encountered so rarely that they 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 255 

cannot be established in the speech of the novice in the 
manner indicated. Then, again, the sentences in the 
beginning of reading are usually so very elementary 
that they present only the simplest substantive and 
predicative constructions. Modifiers, relative pronouns, 
phrases, and clauses are excluded in totOj so that his 
reading gives him practically no experience with their 
correct and effective use. A six-year-old child is far 
more advanced in his oral than in his visual linguistic 
development. As he develops, however, he encounters 
in his reading all varieties of constructions, the simpler 
forms first, and passing constantly to those more involved. 
If he goes on through the elementary school, he will have 
experience with some of the best writing in our language, 
such as is found in the less intricate works of Milton, 
Scott, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Lowell, 
Holmes, Webster, and many others. If he continues 
his reading of EngHsh literature through the high school, 
he will be brought in contact with specimens of the most 
complicated constructions found in our literature. 

It is probable that the pupil's reading in his later years 
does not exert such an influence upon his expression as 
it does during the middle period of his development, when 
his own expression and that of the authors he reads are 
close together in respect alike to content and to complexity 
of construction. H., at ten, is reading authors — Scott, 
for instance — whose constructions are too complicated 



256 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

for use in the spontaneous activities of her daily life. At 
six her every-day expression was considerably more in- 
volved than that presented in her reading. At eight, the 
two were probably about on a par; but they did not re- 
main abreast of one another very long. Both have grown 
constantly more complicated, but the reading has rapidly 
outstripped oral expression, and it is likely to get so far 
ahead of it by the age of twelve or thirteen that the two 
will have little in common. 

I have observed carefully the effect upon the sponta- 
neous expression of several children of introducing them 
to authors like Dickens. I am confident there is some 
influence, but it is not as great as current theory leads 
one to expect. Certain peculiar phrases which catch the 
attention of children are copied, and deHberately made 
a part of the linguistic material of daily intercourse; but 
the main body of customary forms of expression are not 
affected. The most potent influence is found in the pupil 
becoming impressed with some of the author's more 
striking characters and describing them, in part by repeat- 
ing their expressions. It may be noted in this connection 
that the child sometimes borrows phrases from his reading 
for the mere novelty of using them, on special occasions 
and for special purposes. He may not employ them at 
all as means of expression in the true sense when he is 
trying to communicate some experience to his companions. 

A child of eight who is reading "Robinson Crusoe," 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 257 

"Alice in Wonderland," ''Swiss Family Robinson," The condi- 
tions under 
and the " Iliad " and '' Odyssey " will show in different which read- 
degrees the influence of each of these books. " Alice in flu^^e oral 
Wonderland" wiU be most potent, ''Robinson Crusoe " ^^P^^^i^^- 
next, and the " Iliad " and " Odyssey " will have practi- 
cally no influence. "Hiawatha" will have more influence 
than the Greek myths. The EngHsh Folk Stories, some 
of them, such as "Jack and the Beanstalk," will exert a 
considerable influence. So one might go through with 
the whole list of children's books, and he would find that 
those dealing with situations most remote from the daily 
life and special interests of the reader exert the least in- 
fluence upon his expression. 

The principle, like all others concerning linguistic de- 
velopment, is seen operating in a complex way in mature 
life. A literary man will show the influence of his reading 
of Shakespeare and Milton and Tennyson in his own ex- 
pression, but this is not likely to be so true of the psychol- 
ogist or economist or educationist. On the other hand, 
if an intelligent educationist reads Spencer's "Education," 
for example, the influence will be apparent, except per- 
haps in the case of one, say the average teacher of fifty 
years or more, whose linguistic forms have become thor- 
oughly ossified. When one gains the thought of his 
author, with whom he sympathizes, which means, for 
one thing, that they are both on about the same plane 
of development with respect to the particular matter in 



258 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

question, he gains also, in some measure, the forms of 
expression in which the thought is presented. This is 
not to say that he tries deliberately to copy the forms of 
expression, or is even aware that he is doing so; but when 
new thought is gained, not having found complete expres- 
sion in definite forms of one's own, the line of least resist- 
ance is through the expression of the author. Really 
what seems to happen is that the author's modes of expres- 
sion tend to establish channels of ready outlet for kindred 
ideas in the reader, in the event that these ideas are in 
some measure novel. 

Summary. i. Linguistic efficiency is a special, not a general, matter. 

It is rare that any one is efficient in every situation in which he 
may be placed. One may be brilliant in one linguistic situation, 
but very commonplace in a different one. 

2. Profound thought does not insure readiness and effi- 
ciency in oral expression; indeed the opposite is often true. 

3. To a certain extent, probably, efficiency in oral expres- 
sion is due to native endowment; but too much emphasis 
should not be placed on this factor. The really essential factor 
in the development of efficiency is the necessity for effective 
expression in group activities. 

4. The special people with whom a child associates largely 
determine his linguistic development. The child who has inti- 
mate, give-and-take linguistic experience with the largest num- 
ber of people of varied temperament, training, and interests 
will, other things being equal, become more efficient linguis- 
tically than a child who is narrowly limited in his social inter- 
course. 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN ORAL EXPRESSION 259 

5. The typical school, with its excessively large number of 
pupils under one teacher, leading to formal methods of teach- 
ing, does not ordinarily exert a very beneficial influence upon a 
pupil's linguistic development. 

6. When the various studies in the school are presented 
in a V7ay which makes them remote from the spontaneous life 
of the pupil, they will have but slight influence upon his linguis- 
tic development. But every subject taught in a vital way will 
contribute to the pupil's vocabulary and general expressive 
power. 

7. If the pupil is to grow linguistically in the school, he 
must be frequently placed in linguistic situations much like 
those in his extra-school environment. 

8. The topical method of recitation affords opportunity to 
give the pupil valuable linguistic training. Mere question-and- 
answer methods are likely to arrest the individual's develop- 
ment. 

9. The doctrine that if one keeps only approved linguistic 
forms before the pupil he will in time assimilate them subcon- 
sciously is only partially true. A pupil will not detect some of 
the characteristic qualities of, say, Scott's or Tennyson's style 
unless his attention is turned to them specially by the teacher. 

10. A child will profit most expressionally by the stories he 
hears or reads when he is required to put himself in the place 
of the characters, and personate them, linguistically and other- 
wise. 

II. The doctrine that a pupil should be made to reproduce 
"in his own words" stories told or read to him may be carried 
so far that he will not gain anything of value from many of the 
models that should play an important part in his linguistic 
development. 



26o LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

12. After the adolescent period, the influence of models 
probably begins to decline, except in the case of persons who 
feel an active literary need, and are searching for terms and 
phrases and forms to aid themselves. 

13. In high schools linguistic training is quite defective as 
a rule. Pupils often come out of the high school unable to 
express themselves freely or connectedly on any topic. Debat- 
ing and literary societies, if not conducted in too formal a man- 
ner, will do more for the high school pupil's linguistic growth 
than the learning of rules in the schoolroom. 

14. In his reading the child becomes focally aware of verbal 
elements to which he gives little if any attention as they are pre- 
sented in oral form. 

15. In the beginning of reading the linguistic situations are 
much simpler than those which the pupil is accustomed to in 
oral communication, and the latter is not influenced by the for- 
mer, except in respect to impressive words or phrases as they 
occur in folk tales or fables or similar reading. 

16. It is not long before the constructions in the reading 
become as complex as those occurring in oral expression, and are 
of much the same general character. At this point reading 
exerts marked influence on speech, provided the reading relates 
to the more common experiences of daily life. Before the 
adolescent period is reached the pupil's reading will have become 
considerably more complex linguistically than his speech, and 
then the latter will be little influenced by the former. 

17. Reading will have an influence upon oral expression 
just in the measure that it comes close to the interests and 
abihties of the pupil. 



CHAPTER XI 

PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 

I. The Interdependence of the Several Linguistic Modes 

In much of the current hterature deahng with the Thereia- 
teaching of English in the earlier stages, one may find the writing to 
statement that effective writing depends directly upon effec- ^P®®^^- 
tive speech. Teachers are exhorted to give attention at the 
outset mainly to oral expression; for if they get their 
pupils to talk correctly and effectually, written expression 
will take care of itself largely; though it is not claimed 
that the latter can be ignored altogether.^ The psychology 
upon which this conception is based runs something like 
this: talking and writing are but aspects of a unitary 
process of expression, and the individual can reveal his 
ideas readily by either route when one is learned; if he has 
mastered one system of forms, he can at will translate them 
into the other system. Expressive abihty is, according to 
this view, a general thing; gained in one mode, it can be 
employed in all modes. 

It seems probable that this doctrine takes no account of 
several important factors which make expression by way 

^ Cf., for instance, Hall, "Adolescence," Vol. II, pp. 449-495. 
261 



262 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of the pen quite different in some respects from oral ex- 
pression, and which interfere with the ready transference 
of skill from one mode to the other. To begin with, in the 
course of development, oral expression becomes, as we have 
seen, a more or less automatic process for all oft-repeated 
verbal combinations. When I ask S., at four, to analyze 
some of his complicated sentences, telling me each word 
used and its sequential relations to the whole series, he 
generally makes poor work of it on the first trial. How- 
ever, I can help him by causing him to repeat his sentences 
slowly, stopping first upon one element and then upon 
another, which tends to bring each word into the focus of 
consciousness momentarily. But the point is that, even 
by the fourth year, many sentences in oral expression have 
become so completely consolidated that the component 
elements have lost their individuahty. It is doubtful if 
these elements ever have distinct individuality until they 
are later by deliberate intent dissected out from the wholes 
of which they have become organic parts. But while the 
sentence is being constructed in the early years, there is 
greater likelihood of separate terms occupying a place in 
the attention than when the sentence is built and used 
freely without modification in the linguistic commerce of 
daily life. Theoretically, a child might be vividly conscious 
of verbal elements during the constructive period, and yet 
his attention would be gradually withdrawn from them 
according as the building progressed, so that when he 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 263 

reached the age when " composition " should be begun, 
he would have made most of his oral language automatic. 

We may give our attention now to the question, Can the Does skiu 

. 1 Ml 1 1 1 • 1 in one mode 

child Utilize m a graphic way skill developed m the con- insure skill 
stniction of the sentence vocally? To come to the point at gn^one? " 
once, observation and experiment show that vocal series 
in expression may be well developed, while the correspond- 
ing graphic series may remain wholly unformed ; in witness 
whereof, witness the vocal and graphic abilities of a pupil 
in the first or second grade, say. When H. was eight, 
to cite an instance illustrating a special phrase of the prin- 
ciple, she could write many individual words readily, and 
she could reproduce dictated sentences without trouble. 
But when I would request her to write originally on any 
simple subject that she could talk upon with facility, 
she would be confused and helpless. " What will I say ? " 
would without fail be her first question. She desired me 
to dictate her expressions ; for she appeared unable to frame 
sentences originally and write them. Probably her confu- 
sion was due to her inability to express readily in a 
graphic w^ay the elements of her ideas as they were formed. 
Ready expression doubtless aids in developing ideas. 
When linguistic forms can be employed with facility, the 
central processes are likely to occur readily and orderly; 
but if the former is impossible, the latter will probably be 
disorganized. " I cannot think what to say," H. would 
declare, though if I ask her to tell me she rushes ahead 



264 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

without the slightest difficulty. Why is she unable to think 
of anything to say ? Is it not because her attention is de- 
voted wholly to the unfamiliar mode of expression ? If the 
moment an idea appeared in consciousness she could ex- 
press it graphically in an automatic manner, she could 
keep the content to be expressed constantly in the focus of 
consciousness; and then she would *' think." But as it is, 
/ the images that may come into the focus of attention will 
1 not remain there, nor will they appear in any organized 
manner, because she has no definitely formed patterns 
of expression in the new mode. 
The first I^ teaching H. to express herself in writing, I ask her to 

gakii^ng ^^^^ ^^ Something about the experience she wishes to de- 
written scribc. I thus take her attention from the source of her 

troubles, and concentrate it on the experience. When she 
gives me a sentence or two, I ask her to repeat slowly, 
and then to write. In this manner she gets the sentence 
in hand, and the slow repetition causes the individual words 
to stand out, though they are held in a certain sequence; 
and now she can write. By this means she translates her 
sentence into the imagery which stimulates the appropriate 
motor routes, into which it runs when I dictate the sentence 
to her. At the outset of learning to write, the motor pro- 
cesses were associated with, or were a reaction upon, audi- 
tory words. I speak the word "cat"; then with my aid 
the child works it out graphically. In this way the word 
becomes established in an audito-graphic series. If this 



expression. 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 265 

sort of experience be repeated, it results that the auditory 
form of the word must always be present before the 
appropriate graphic processes can be set off. This is 
doubtless the case also when the child begins his writing 
by copying words from the blackboard or copy-book. He 
first translates them into the auditory form; and while 
probably the latter form degenerates with development, 
still it continues to be more or less essential to writing, even 
in maturity. Destroy absolutely the ability to convert ver- 
bal forms into auditory elements, and the power to write 
them will suffer or be lost altogether. The point I wish to 
impress here is that after the child discovers, in the way 
sketched above, that he can equate certain vocal and 
graphic motor processes, he can then employ the ele- 
ments thereof in new combinations. If :r of a vocal 
series equals y oi sl graphic series in simple expressions, 
then, when later, in more complicated situations, the 
child wishes to express x graphically, he can produce its 
equivalent in graphic form. In the course of normal 
development the process becomes ever more facile, and 
distinct imagery therein gradually disappears, and in 
some cases it may go altogether. This in principle 
seems to be the natural history of all transmuting of 
vocal into graphic series. 

Graphic expression presents exceptional difficulties to the 
novice, mainly because of its relative slowness and clumsi- 
ness. Even at the beginning of reading, the eye grasps 



266 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Graphic 
expression 
is compar- 
atively 
slow and 
clumsy. 



comparatively readily the prominent characteristics of in- 
dividual words and phrases; and an eighteen-months-old 
child will utter a long string of vocal combinations with ease 
and rapidity. But when it comes to the graphic production 
of words and phrases, the hand lags far behind the eye and 
the tongue. Every detail of verbal form has now to be 
worked out explicitly, which is not true to the same extent 
of either speech or reading. Of course, with increasing 
experience one is likely to acquire such facility in written 
expression that details of familiar forms fuse into larger 
wholes, and are executed without explicit attention being 
given to each ; but skill in this respect probably never de- 
velops as far as it does in reading or speaking. 

So the hand retards the flow of ideas, and this results in 
confusion and inhibition of expression, no matter how sim- 
ple may be the theme of the novice. Let an adult attempt 
to express himself upon any familiar subject in a foreign 
tongue of which he is not thoroughly master, and he will 
show some such confusion and inhibition as does the child 
who is just beginning his work in composition. When 
observing a child trying to express a simple thought in 
writing, one is apt to feel that his vocal facility proves a 
hindrance to him. If he were less expert in auditory and 
vocal verbal imagery, he might succeed more easily in 
translating these series into graphic terms. Of course, the 
oftener one has translated any auditory and vocal series 
into writing, the easier and more facile the process will be- 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 267 

! come. In the beginning there are always false moves, and 
j much hesitation, since any particular auditory or vocal 
imagery does not awaken definite graphic imagery. But 
as practice proceeds, the several elements in the right process 
are fused into a whole ; and in the end the writer may have 
simply a general auditory or visual or vocal feehng of the 
word or sentence to be written, and this will find expres- 
sion in appropriate graphic movements, without a single 
element of the process anywhere along the route being focal 
in consciousness, except it be that the thought processes of 
the writer occur in auditory, visual, or vocal verbal terms. 
But in this later case words or sentences are not distinctly 
audized or visualized or vocalized for the purpose of con- 
sciously carrying them into graphic forms ; they are just 
the symbols in terms of which experience becomes organ- 
ized. That is to say, when a well-trained man is writing, 
the verbal forms that pass through the focus of conscious- 
ness are the representatives of consoKdated experiences, 
and they are brought into consciousness for the purpose of 
being arranged in orderly systems, and little if any atten- 
tion is given to the modus operandi of expressing them. 
But it is altogether different with the novice ; when he 
attempts to write, the verbal forms focal in consciousness 
are there for the purpose of directing the movements of the 
hand. Consequently, his attention is distracted from the 
content to be conveyed, with the result that his thought 
moves in a fragmentary, disjointed manner. 



268 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

2. Simple i^s. Complex Units in Graphic Expression 

structural Viewed from the structural standpoint, the simplest 

logSsim- u^its in writing are the elements of the letters. In an older 
pucity. ^^y^ writing masters compelled their pupils to first learn 

these simple elements separately — the " right curve, '^ 
the " left curve," etc. These having been acquired, they 
were then combined to form letters, beginning with the 
simplest, as /, and progressing gradually to the more com- 
plex, as W. Still later these letters were combined into 
words, beginning again with those structm-ally simple, 
as ity and moving steadily on to words more involved. 
Pupils were often drilled in this manner upon technique 
four or five years before they were required to employ it 
in the expression of content.^ These teachers worked on 
the principle of proceeding from the simple to the complex, 
as they interpreted it; but they failed to take account of 
the difference between structural and psychological sim- 
plicity and complexity. Sometimes the two are the same ; 
but this is not always the case, and is probably not so in 
the present instance. In writing, if emphasis be put upon 
the most elementary movements at the outset, and if these 
be perfected by themselves, comparative inefficiency is 
apt to be the result; since in the needs of daily life these 
elements are never employed separately, but always in the 

^ The writer found this method in vogue in some of the schools of Italy, 
France, and England in the year 1906. 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 269 

relationships involved in words. If the unitary movement 
in writing be the execution of the elements of letters, it re- 
sults that habits of this elementary character are formed, 
and freedom and facility in the execution of more complex 
forms are hindered. One who has learned to write "man," 
say, by first practising on the elements of the form m, and 
later combining these forms into the letter; then follow- 
ing in the same manner with a and w; and finally putting 
them together into this more complex word, — one who has 
proceeded in this manner always retains some feeling of the 
independence and separateness of these various elements. 
Their separate execution continues to be more or less in- 
sistent in spite of what he may do later to obliterate their 
individuality. But the child who begins at once writing 
the whole word does not acquire the sense of separateness of 
the structural elements. The word as a whole is regarded 
as a unity, to be executed as a unity. In execution there 
is one motor act required, not fourteen or fifteen indepen- 
dent acts following one another. Now, economy and effi- 
ciency alike demand that as large and complex unities 
as possible be mastered as wholes from the start. As the 
pupil proceeds, he must grasp larger and larger units; 
his attention must take them in as wholes, and he must be 
encouraged to express them as wholes, precisely as he 
learns to do in speech. In the latter mode of expression 
the child's survival, looking at the thing in a broad way, 
depends upon his grasping phrases, clauses, and even 



270 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



The prob- 
lem of the 
language 
unities in 
teaching 
written 
expression. 



sentences as wholes, and expressing them as such. The 
child who utters his speech in words, each having separate- 
ness and individuality, will drop behind in the linguistic 
race. The principle applies equally well to writing. 

We are brought now into one of the most complex and 
difficult of all teaching situations. Economy and efficiency, 
we have seen, require that the pupil should begin with as 
large language unities as possible; but his immaturity, 
his limitations in the range of his attention, and his power 
of executing complex motor series make it imperative for 
him to start with relatively simple combinations. I have 
found it impossible in teaching a child of six, just begin- 
ning writing proper, to start with the word " elephant,'' 
without what appeared to be great waste. The gains of 
one day would be lost before the practice of the next day. 
The processes were too elaborate to be integrated into a 
unit by the child ; and time after time he would be put 
through the movements, but without any effective organi- 
zation — without the formation of a motor series corre- 
lated with the visual series got from looking at the v/ord, 
and with the auditory series gained from hearing the word 
pronounced. The principle seems to be universal in its 
application to motor acts. When H. began her instru- 
mental music, it was necessary for her to commence 
with very simple combinations, though what is de- 
manded for efficiency in musical performance is the 
execution of complex combinations as unities. But an 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 27 1 

attempt to get H. to start off at once with "The Jolly 
Farmer," as an instance, resulted in her making no prog- 
ress whatever. Not having mastered the more elementary 
unities, she could not grasp the larger ones. This means 
that there must be a certain degree of familiarity with ele- 
ments before complexes can be economically attacked. 
The principle appears to hold for the acquisition of any 
art. Bryan and Harter seem to have shown it to be true 
in respect to the learning of the telegraphic language. For 
a number of years the author has made observations on 
persons learning golf, and in no case noted has much 
skill been attained without some special attention having 
been given early to the stance, the address, the swing, etc., 
as elementary processes. 

Confining our discussion of the principle in question 
to its bearing upon the mastery of writing, we need to in- 
quire now whether the novice must master many words 
separately, so that he can write them automatically before 
he employs them as parts merely of a larger whole, the 
sentence. Any one who has experimented with children 
in learning to spell must have observed that a pupil may 
write spelling lists well, but when he comes to use the same 
words in an essay he may often go astray on them ; which 
is doubtless due to the fact that the speller's attention is to 
a degree distracted by the complex situation presented in 
having to write a series of words very dissimilar in content, 
and in visual and auditory form; and these must all be 



272 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

arranged in a certain sequence, and must follow the prin- 
ciples of agreement. Moreover, this combination of words 
must express some idea relevant to a given subject or situa- 
tion. Now, words that have not often been used effectively 
in complex situations like this cannot be so used on occa- 
sion. Without question the novice profits somewhat by 
his drill upon words in isolation; but a considerable 
amount of the facility gained in this way, if it is carried 
to automatization, is lost when he is called upon to employ 
words in the ordinary combinations required for effective 
expression. 

How, then, can we harmonize these principles ? Expe- 
rience and theory agree that the pupil must first get the 
swing of simple words in isolation. The longer he delays 
beginning his writing, the more complex forms he can 
undertake at the outset ; for, even though he is not prac- 
tised in writing during the early years, he is nevertheless 
continually gaining in the power of executing relatively 
complex motor series. It is important, however, that the 
novice should not stay long enough upon elementary pro- 
cesses to make them automatic. Before this point is 
reached he must be required to use them in larger unities, 
as they will be employed in the affairs of life. Training 
for facility in elements must be secured mainly through the 
use of these elements in the wholes in which they normally 
function. As the pupil develops, and the elementary units 
become more and more automatic in the wholes of which 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 273 

they are the elements, the necessity for practising upon 

them separately will gradually cease. The attention must 

then be kept upon the larger units, — the sentence and the 

paragraph. 

3. Punctuation 

There is one characteristic of written expression which is The atti- 
largely or wholly lackmg m oral expression, at least so far novice 
as the learner is explicitly aware of it. He is not conscious punctua- 
of anything like punctuation in his speech. V., at eight, *^^°' 
says to me, " I think I will write * Hiawatha was an Indian 
boy,' " taking the sentence from his reading; and he goes 
on word by word until the end; but there is nothing in the 
oral form that corresponds with the period at the close, 
which I show him in his book. I may ask him if he does 
not " let his voice fall " after boyj but this does not contrib- 
ute at all to his enlightenment. I may ask him again if 
he has not '' given me a complete thought "; but if he has 
he is not aware of it, and it is not easy to make him under- 
stand what I mean. The oral expression of the sentence 
is an automatic process with him, and he cannot readily 
make it a matter of observation and reflection. Besides, 
the child of seven cannot realize that his thought is com- 
posed of units, each expressed by a sentence. Of course, 
he can be trained to say that " a sentence is the expres- 
sion of a thought," and that *' a period should be used 
at the completion of a thought "; but this may be wholly 
mechanical with him. One may see pupils very glib 



274 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

with their definitions who rarely, on their own initiative, 
use a mark of punctuation correctly. 

Punctuation in the beginning must be a matter either of 
mere definition or dehberate imitation. When the pupil 
copies sentences from his book or the board, he notes the 
period and he copies it too; but why he does not and 
cannot understand in its grammatical foundations. If you 
dictate a sentence to a beginner, you will find that you will 
need to remind him over and over again of the period, even 
though he has copied many sentences in which he has 
always used it. The feeling of the need of punctuation 
comes only after long habituation ; though when the learner 
reaches the point where he can analyze his thought and dis- 
cern the relations of its elements, he may come to see the 
value of some means of indicating in his writing the divi- 
sions in his thinking. Even with all their special training 
in school, children of nine or ten will often show when they 
read aloud that they are not appreciating in any true sense, 
or regarding, the punctuation marks; and when they write 
their little essays or letters spontaneously, they must be 
constantly exhorted to be careful about their commas and 
periods and question marks, though they may be accurate 
in everything else.^ 

^ Lewis, in discussing punctuation, says that "the reader's train of 
thought goes straight ahead from word to word until the punctuation 
mark warns it that there is danger of misunderstanding if it does not 
pause. The mark shows that the words which precede it are to be 
understood mentally as a group, and to be read orally as a group. If the 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 275 

Children of nine or ten years who have had consider- Thedevel- 

... , . , . opmentofa 

able experience m writing letters, and m reproducing feeling for 
stories, nature lessons, and the like, begin to show appre- ^^^^ 
ciation of the use of the period and the interrogation mark, 
and, to a much less extent, of the comma and the exclama- 
tion point. Other forms of grammatical and rhetorical 
punctuation are not appreciated, or used intelHgently at this 
age. At this period the child's written expressions are all 
cast in simple moulds, — subject and predicate, with few 
if any modifiers. One can follow a pupil as he comes to 
feel the need of these marks, as a matter of developing 
habit, until finally they are employed automatically; and 
of course they may be, as they often are, employed with 
explicit consciousness. So he grows on, ever increasing 
in power in the integration of experience, and requiring 
more complex forms of expression for the portrayal thereof ^ 
and as a consequence he will seize upon more and more in- 

thought is kept in mind that a punctuation mark is a sort of danger signal, 
many of the difficulties of the subject vanish. * Henry rose, and I with him 
laughed at the story we had heard.' If that comma be omitted between 
rose and and, what happens?" A "First Book in Writing English," pp. 
23-24. 

The comment to be made on this is that it is quite late in the child's 
linguistic development before he appreciates the danger of that sort of 
misunderstanding that may be avoided by taking account of the punc- 
tuation marks. The novice gets the larger picture portrayed in his read- 
ing, and his appreciation does not possess those subtleties that require the 
use of marks to properly define. Of course, he will come to this in time, 
but it is useless, if not worse, to treat him as though he stood in any con- 
scious need of punctuation as the adult does. 



276 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

volved sentential models given him by his teacher, or pre- 
sented in his books. H. and her companions, all about the 
age of ten, are conducting a " magazine " in which appear 
" essays," " poems," etc., from each member. They are 
just now in the frame of mind to profit best by suggestions 
respecting the technique of composition, and as a matter of 
fact they solicit aid from any well-disposed persons they 
know who can help them to accomplish what they feel in 
an obscure way, but cannot quite realize. It is wasteful, 
if indeed it is at all possible, to accumulate skill or 
efiiciency in this respect against some remote time of need. 
The pupil must first feel the limitations in his present 
equipment before he can appropriate readily and effectively 
the means of extending it. So it is bad policy to give pupils 
in the seventh and eighth grades, and even in the high 
school, models in Hterary expression taken from the more 
involved writings of Milton, Shakespeare, Bacon, Tenny- 
son, Addison, and the like. The formal grammatical and 
rhetorical text-books are full of complicated but excellent 
examples of expression, judged from the standpoint of the 
appreciative adult, culled from the world's great literature, 
the aim being to illustrate every quality of strength and 
grace and efficiency in style by the best instances to be 
found anywhere. But there is an error here which runs 
through much of our educational theory : what is logically 
" best " in adult appreciation is interpreted to be most 
suitable for the child at every stage in his development. 



PROCESSES IN GRAPHIC EXPRESSION 277 

We hear this same contention made by artists, musicians, 
and literati. This fallacy is very apt to be committed by 
an adult who is unfamiliar with the processes of mental 
evolution, and who merely speculates regarding materials 
and methods of education for those in an immature stage 
of development. The point to be impressed is that those 
materials and methods alone are " best " for any stage 
of development that are most completely adapted to the 
interests, abilities, and needs of that particular stage. 

1. The processes in graphic expression at the outset are Summary, 
quite distinct from those in oral expression, although many 
teachers maintain that if a pupil can talk readily and efifectively 

he can compose in the same way. 

2. But skill in one mode of expression cannot be transferred 
to another mode, at least without loss. Observation and ex- 
periment both indicate that one may be very fluent and capable 
in speech, but dull and ineffective in composition ; and the con- 
verse is sometimes, though not commonly, true. 

3. However, the development of skill in graphic must be 
based upon oral expression, which is always the earlier mode. 
In the graphic process, thought must first be verbalized in audi- 
tory forms, then probably in vocal and visual forms, and then 
in graphic forms. Upon continual repetition, with emphasis 
upon graphic execution, the auditory, vocal, and visual factors 
come to play a less and less important part, until they may dis- 
appear entirely from the focus of consciousness, and function 
only marginally. 

4. Graphic expression is unusually difficult for the novice, 
for one reason because it is comparatively slow and clumsy, so 
that he avoids it whenever possible. 



278 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

5. Teachers generally maintain that the child must proceed 
from the simple to the complex in mastering graphic expression; 
but there is a difference between structural and psychological 
simplicity. In composition, if the novice be kept too long at the 
outset upon the most elementary factors, his time and energy 
will be wasted. Besides, he will not acquire writing so that it 
can be employed most effectively. 

6. Economy and efficiency require that in teaching graphic 
expression the pupil work always with the largest unities he 
can grasp and execute as unities. He must strive to acquire 
elementary unities as functioning in more complex ones, not 
as isolated and independent. He must not drill upon the lower 
unities until they become automatic, but only until he gains such 
familiarity with them that he can use them in the larger unities. 

7. The novice comes to punctuation without any experience 
which will enable him to appreciate its function in the expres- 
sion of his thought. He must therefore learn it de novo. 

8. From the standpoint of the learner, punctuation is wholly 
arbitrary, and he tends to learn it mechanically. In time, 
though, he can be made to see its service in expression, and he 
can then make progress in employing it effectively. But he 
must not be asked to learn punctuation in complex sentences 
quite beyond his own needs in expression. 



CHAPTER XII 

DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 

I. Aesthetic Function of Language 

Our discussion in the preceding chapter dealt mainly, The Spen 
though not wholly, with the developmental history of thecTr^ re- 
accuracy and fluency in the child's expression; and while gj^ig^^^^ 
it is recognized that these are essential elements in efficiency, 
yet it is also apparent that there are other characteristics 
which are equally essential. A present-day orator may 
be as accurate grammatically and as ready of utterance 
as Webster was in his greatest oration, and still he may 
be far less effective; and the deficiency may be due to 
differences in " style " merely. A man may write readily 
and accurately, and yet he may not give his readers pleasure 
or move them to action. These are simple facts which 
in principle were considered in discussing oral expression, 
and we need not dwell upon them longer here. 

Every one is probably familiar with Spencer's view, 
which has been generally adopted in our own day, — that 
efficiency in style is determined by the ease with which 
the writer inserts his ideas into the minds of his readers.^ 

^ " To so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least 
possible mental effort is the desideratum towards which most of the rules 

279 



28o LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Economy of the reader's attention marks the highest 
quahty of style ; the choice of words and phrases and their 
arrangement in the sentence should all depend upon this 
supreme aim. Now, while this principle is doubtless of 
great value, it still does not account for all the facts. It 
ignores the interest which people have in the aesthetic 
quality of language, and also the possibiHty of arousing 
and directing emotion through Hnguistic melody, rhythm, 
and force. Spencer's theory assumes that the only func- 
tion of language is the conveyance of thought;^ but this 

above quoted point. When we condemn writing that is wordy or con- 
fused or intricate — when we praise this style as easy, and blame that as 
fatiguing, we consciously or unconsciously assume this desideratum 
as our standard of judgment. Regarding language as an apparatus of 
symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a me- 
chanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, 
the greater will be the effect produced. In either case, whatever force is 
absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result. A reader or lis- 
tener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. 
To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him requires part of 
this power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a fur- 
ther part; and only that part which remains can be used for realizing the 
thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention it takes to re- 
ceive and imderstand each sentence, the less time and attention can be 
given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be con- 
ceived." Spencer, " Philosophy of Style," p. ir. 

^ Spencer seems to think that words, in order to be reacted upon, must 
always awaken images, or thoughts, perhaps, which is clearly erroneous. 
Witness the following : — 

"This superiority of specific expressions is clearly due to a saving of the 
effort required to translate words into thoughts. As we do not think in 
generals but in particulars — as, whenever any class of things is referred to, 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 281 

is obviously only a partial view. However, if we interpret 
Spencer as Matthews * does, this objection disappears in 
part. Matthews goes on to say that " what such a writer 
has for his supreme object is to convey his thought into 
the minds of his readers with the least friction; and he 
tries therefore to avoid all awkwardness of phrase, all 
incongruous words, all locutions likely to arouse resistance, 
since any one of these things will inevitably lessen the 
amount of attention which this reader or that will then 
have available for the reception of the writer's message. 
This is what Herbert Spencer has called the principle of 
Economy of Attention; and a firm grasp of this principle 
is a condition precedent to a clear understanding of the 
literary art." 

In this passage, taken by itself, Matthews does not itunder- 
attach sufficient importance to what is generally under- aesthetic 
stood by the aesthetic function of language. As early as i^guage° 
two years of age children delight in linguistic play in 
which the interchange of thought is of secondary impor- 
tance. In the Mother Goose jingles and the nursery 
classics, for instance, the child gets his chief pleasure from 

we represent it to ourselves by calling to mind individual members of it; 
it follows that when an abstract word is used, the hearer or reader has to 
choose from his stock of images one or more, by which he may figure to 
himself the genus mentioned. In doing this some delay must arise, some 
force be expended; and if, by employing a specific term, an appropriate 
image can be at once suggested, an economy is achieved, and a more vivid 
impression produced." "Philosophy of Style," p. 15. 

* Chap, on "Parts of Speech," in "Essays on English," p. 228. 



282 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

mere verbal effects, as in "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son"; 
" Hey, diddle, diddle; " " i, 2, 3, 4, 5, I caught a hare 
alive; '' " Cross-Patch; '' " Dancy-diddlety-poppity-pin; " 
" Higgledy Piggledy, my black hen; " "This is the house 
that Jack built;" "The Old Woman and her Pig;" 
" Ding Dong, Ding Dong; " " A dillar, a dollar; " and 
so on ad libitum. Let any interested person who has not 
made the experiment test children from three to six or 
seven with the collection of rhymes in Andrew Lang's 
book, for example, and he will soon find that if he ehmi- 
nates the rhythm and peculiar verbal qualities from the 
stories, most of them lose their charm entirely. 

In the spontaneous life of children from four onwards 
there is a good deal of experimentation with linguistic 
materials in the effort to produce mere rhythmical combi- 
nations without sense. Interest in nonsense rhymes 
awakens early, and lasts until adolescence, at any rate, 
and possibly it never disappears entirely. Children com- 
pete with each other in making these rhymes; and when 
they succeed, they manifest pleasure in their achievements. 
The love of poetry is, of course, based upon rhythm, which 
is fundamental in human nature. In the early years the 
rhythm alone will often give pleasure, though the words 
be meaningless; but in maturity we require that the poet 
shall, while gratifying our sense of rhythm, present us 
at the same time with his reflections respecting some of 
the problems of life. The point is that language is not. 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 283 

or need not be, merely or mechanically symbolic. While 
performing this function it may also, if skilfully employed, 
arouse feelings which will energize the ideas that have 
been established, or which will be of value in themselves. 
Thus one may find pleasure in the verse of Tennyson or 
Shakespeare or Dante, even though the thought portrayed 
is of minor importance or beyond his comprehension.^ 
In our adult reading we often come across passages or 
stanzas in which the thought presented is not of chief, or 
at least not of sole, importance; but on account of their 
rhythmical character they delight us, as, for instance, in 
Shakespeare's lines beginning '' Hey Noni, no," or his 
''Under the Greenwood Tree," or "Blow, Blow, thou Win- 
ter Wind." Mahoney's ''The Bells of Shandon" is a good 
illustration of the principle, as are also parts of " Gray's 
Elegy"; and many other illustrations will occur to the 

* Spencer endeavors to extend his theory of economy to explain our 
enjoyment of poetry. "There is one peculiarity of poetry," he says, 
"conducing much to its effect — the peculiarity which is indeed usually 
thought its characteristic one — still remaining to be considered : we 
mean its rhythmical structure. This, improbable though it seems, will 
be found to come under the same generalization with the others. Like 
each of them, it is an idealization of the natural language of strong emo- 
tion, which is known to be more or less metrical if the emotion be not too 
violent ; and like each of them, it is an economy of the reader's or hearer's 
attention. In the peculiar tone and manner we adopt in uttering ver- 
sified language may be discerned its relationship to the feelings; and the 
pleasure which its measured movement gives us is ascribable to the com- 
parative ease with which words metrically arranged can be recognized." 
(O^. cit., p. 39.) 



284 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Expression 
often se- 
cures reac- 
tion with- 
out 
imagery. 



reader. The principle holds for prose, too. Aristotle's 
thought is generally conceded to be more profound than 
Plato's, but many readers prefer Plato because of the 
" melody," the " beauty," the " richness," the " purity," 
of his style. Plato's style, more perhaps than his thought,^ 
has kept him fresh in the minds of men throughout the 
ages; and one might mention other writers since Grecian 
times who have survived for the same reason. 

Those who treat of language as functioning always by 
awakening ideas go amiss in respect to its oflSce in many 
of the ordinary situations of daily life. Often expressions 
have the happiest effect and achieve the end in view most 
economically, when, viewing the matter ab extra, we 
might suppose they would miss fire altogether, or else 
cause the listener or reader a great deal of unnecessary 
trouble in getting at their meanings. Such expressions 
sometimes arouse no ideas at all in the true sense. An 
instance of the principle is found in the use of slang. When 
a boy of four in response to an inquiry from his fellow as 
to whether he is going to the circus, says," You bet your 
bottom dollar," he produces a very decided effect upon his 
listener, but without the awakening of any definite imagery. 
Such expressions short-circuit the process of stimulation- 
ideation-impulsion-reaction. All linguistic expression pro- 
duces reaction ever more readily upon repetition; but 

* The writer is well aware that some of his readers will differ with 
him in this opinion, but he is firmly convinced of the validity of it. 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 285 

it is probable that explicit central processes are not needed 
at all for the execution of certain types of expression. 
They convey meaning and compel action without any 
necessity of tracing out their connections and ramifica- 
tions. When one boy says to another, " If you do not 
keep away, I will knock you into the middle of next week," 
the one addressed cannot be said to have a full quota of 
images awakened by such an expression, and yet he is 
likely to react appropriately without delay. Again, when 
a man on the ball field calls to his companion to " freeze 
on to the ball," the latter does not ordinarily construct 
any images appropriate to these words; he simply feels 
their import, and his energy instantly passes into action, 
not ideation. Expressions of which the ones given are 
typical have the effect of instantly throwing the reader or 
listener into adjustive attitudes, in which the imagery 
awakened by the language is a negligible factor. 



2. Figurative Expression 

We have now to look into the question, How does the Thedevei- 

, ., T • 1 T M • 1 1 ' • . opment of a 

child acquire the ability to make his written expression dynamic 
go straight to the mark, whatever it may be, so that the 
effect he desires in his listener or reader may be produced 
most economically, speedily, and effectively? In the 
course of development the child begins to enrich his ex- 
pression by calling upon one set of experiences to enliven 



286 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

a more or less novel situation which he is describing. A 
child of five will run in from the street at dark and say, 
" I saw a big thing outdoors that had claws as big as a 
hear J and eyes as bright as the sun, and he roared like 
thunder.^' So his noises are loud as cannons; his animals 
are as big as mountains and as fierce as lions; his men 
are as strong as giants, and so on. From four or five 
onward children are commonly quite active in detecting 
the more impressive likenesses between objects and expe- 
riences, and stating these similarities in figurative speech, 
simple and crude at first, but normally growing ever more 
subtle and effective. It is probable, though, that some 
children are much less ready than are others in this activity. 
S. and V. differ markedly in this respect. They illustrate 
types of minds which become more pronounced as maturity 
is approached, but which are easily distinguished in the 
early years. V. is what might be called the practical type 
in his thinking. He is not " reminiscent " or " imagina- 
tive." His attention is held closely by the particular 
object with which he is dealing, or which he is describing. 
His vision is limited more largely than S. to the thing in 
hand. His mind runs straight on in a horizontal direction, 
while S. will shoot off in any and every direction. In 
the latter case, experience is organized more on the method 
of association by similarity, and the items in the lists are 
active in combining in new ways upon relatively slight 
suggestion. But in the first type of mind association 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 287 

by contiguity predominates; there is little cutting across 
from one series of experiences to others. 

James ^ has described the figurative type of mind, and 
I may quote his words: *' Instead of thoughts of concrete 
things patiently following one another in a beaten track 
of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross- 
cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most 
rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most un- 
heard-of combinations of elements, the subtlest associa- 
tions of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced 
into a seething caldron of ideas, where everything is fiz- 
zling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity, 
where partnerships can be joined or loosened in an instant, 
treadmill routine is unknown, and the unexpected seems 
the only law. According to the idiosyncrasy of the indi- 
vidual, the scintillations will have one character or an- 
other. They will be sallies of wit and humor; they will 
be flashes of poetry and eloquence ; they will be construc- 
tions of dramatic fiction or of mechanical device, logical 
or philosophic abstractions, business projects, or scien- 
tific hypotheses, with trains of experimental consequences 
based thereon; they will be musical sounds, or images of 
plastic beauty or picturesqueness, or visions of moral 
harmony. But, whatever their differences may be, they 
will all agree in this, — that their genesis is sudden and, 
as it were, spontaneous. That is to say, the same premises 
1 "The Will to Believe," pp. 248-249. 



288 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

would not, in the mind of another individual, have engen- 
dered just that conclusion; although when the conclusion 
is offered to the other individual, he may thoroughly 
accept and enjoy it and envy the brilliancy of him to 
whom it first occurred." 
Factors The difference between children in the freedom and 

encefigura- amplitude of figurative expression will be due also, it 
tive activity, gg^j^g hardly necessary to say, to the breadth of their 
experiences, and to the way in which these have become 
organized through the influence of parent or teacher or 
story-book. For instance, here are two children who 
are studying the pussy willow in the spring. The first 
is limited in his thought about it to what is actually pre- 
sented to his vision or his sense of touch. He looks at 
the bud, and tells its size, not in terms of other objects, 
but in terms of a standard of measurement, — inches, 
say. He feels of the bud and describes his impression, 
not in terms of the feeling of some other object, as velvet ; 
but he says it is soft, agreeable, etc. If such words are 
" faded metaphors," as some philologists tell us, they 
have fully lost their metaphorical character so far as the 
child is concerned. They are essentially technical terms, 
aiming to express precisely the effect upon sense of a given 
experience. When he opens the bud, he tells what he 
finds, not in terms of a mother who cares for her young, 
but in strict conformity to observed fact. Science gives 
us descriptions of objects and phenomena in units of 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 289 

measurement of some sort, while poetry gives us descrip- 
tions in terms of other objects and experiences in which 
the qualities to be impressed are strikingly exhibited. 
Byron hears " music breathing from the face of the Bride 
of Abydos, and her eye was in itself a soul." When the 
poet describes a cheek he says it is '' like the dawn of 
day," or " all purple with the beam of youth," or he may 
liken it to any of a thousand familiar objects; but he 
avoids the technical term which is alone adapted to the 
needs of the scientist. 

Now a child may be brought up under circumstances 
where he will hear everything described in terms of units 
of measurement. Another child may be reared under 
circumstances in which novel experiences are commonly 
described in terms of other familiar experiences, and in 
due course this will determine his habit of expression. 
He will get into the way of casting about for a figure 
whenever he has need to express himself effectively. He 
discovers what sorts of figures make the deepest impres- 
sions, and so carry his thought to its goal most effectively, 
and these tend normally as he develops to become most 
prominent in his discourse, whether oral or written. 

Thus far we have touched only upon more or less unre- The study 

of figura- 

flective figurative expression; but in time the pupil comes tive expres- 
sion, 
to the point where he gives this matter expHcit attention. 

In school he is compelled, for the sake of practice, to con- 
struct expressions in which all the commendable qualities 



290 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of style are illustrated. Now, he may in this work be 
simply imitating in a mechanical way the models presented 
in his language or rhetoric texts, just as in penmanship he 
may imitate a copy without being prompted by the motive 
of expressing himself for serious ends. Many claim that 
this sort of experience has considerable influence in making 
the novice figuratively-minded, as it were. It is probable, 
however, that this influence is easily overrated. For a 
number of years manuscripts written on educational sub- 
jects by university juniors and seniors have passed through 
the writer's hands, and he has gained some data respect- 
ing the rhetorical training of the authors. With scarcely 
an exception they have had a course in formal rhetoric, 
and have learned definitions about figures of speech 
and qualities of style; and they have also tried to 
imitate models taken from the world's great literature, 
for the purpose of illustrating all the matters covered by 
the definitions and rules. But the results of this work 
have been uniformly disappointing. The style of these 
students has been quite generally wooden. Rarely does 
one find a really effective figure in this writing; and most 
of it is utterly barren. All this fine rhetorical learning 
has been stowed away out of reach now, or so it appears. 
And the complaint is general; throughout the land there 
is a rising tide of opinion against formal rhetoric. One 
does not have to look far for the source of the trouble. 
The experience which the pupil has in the school is not 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 29I 

related closely enough to his ordinary needs, so that the 
one will merge into and influence the other. The isolated 
expressions given in the books, and their remoteness 
from the ideas which the pupil is usually called upon to 
express, make them something apart from his every-day 
life. The medium of exchange between Shakespeare, 
Milton, Tennyson, Wordsworth, or Carlyle and their 
readers is very different from the medium of exchange 
between boys in the eighth grade, or even in the senior 
year in the high school.* 

The least profitable work of all in the development of 
linguistic efficiency is the mechanical learning of rules, 
with a few formal illustrations, taken largely from poetry, 
which does not lend itself to the portrayal of ordinary 
experience under the conditions of every-day life. We 
must have rules surely, but they should be worked out by 
the pupil himself from his actual experience. Or, if they 
must be learned from a text, then they should be intro- 
duced after, not before, the pupil has had vital contact with 
the concrete matters covered by the rule. The rule must 
be a generalization from actual experience in execution, 
rather than a dogma to be learned and followed. Bain ^ 

^ It is not meant to imply in this statement that pupils should not be 
taught qualities of style except as they may need them in their own ex- 
pression. It will unquestionably be useful often to teach figures, say, 
"as a matter of knowledge and appreciation, and as a critical basis for 
the proper use of such figures as spring up spontaneously in the writers* 
mind " (quotation from comment on MS. by Mr. Roe). 

^ See his "On Teaching English," p. 23. 



292 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Method of 
training 
for effi- 
ciency in 
written 
expression. 



seems to lean in the direction of too great formalism in rhe- 
torical teaching; but if he be interpreted in a liberal way, 
we may quote with approval the following passage: " In 
Composition, as in Grammar, we need two courses of in- 
struction, running side by side. The first is a systematic 
course of principles, with appropriate examples; the sec- 
ond, a critical examination of texts, passages, or writings as 
they occur in some of the good English authors. The two 
methods support and confirm each other, while either by 
itself is unsatisfactory. If there are principles of Com- 
position, they ought to be set forth in systematic array and 
not left to irregular and random presentation. On the 
other hand, unless we grapple with some continuous text, 
we can neither find adequate exemplification nor give any 
assurance of the completeness of our theories." ^ 

If in our teaching we would cause the pupil to express 
himself in reference to the matters of interest to him at the 
time, and then assist him in making this expression as 
effective as possible, employing all possible aids thereto, 
we should accomplish more for him than we commonly 
do at present. Suppose we have a class of pupils ten years 
of age describe a circus they have visited. All bring de- 
scriptions in writing; we then go over them together and 
the pupils express their views as to which are most effec- 
tive. The teacher takes the descriptions and studies them 
in detail, to see how particular expressions could be made 

^ Cf. Bain's statement with Spencer, op. cii., p. 9. 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 293 

more effective. He expresses any given notion in a variety 
of ways, and then asks which of all the forms is most 
acceptable. If he can have at hand an exceptionally fine 
treatment of the subject by a master, and present it at the 
moment when the pupils are vitally interested in the 
means of expression, this model may become integrated 
with their ideas and feelings, and exert an influence for 
good. Under such circumstances it will not seem to the 
pupil external to his thought and needs, and it will suggest 
to him a method of vivifying his own expression. We may 
rest assured that if we can get a pupil to appraise qualities 
of style aright, he will go far on his own accord in choosing 
the strongest and best. It is his instinct to do this, — in 
language as in all other things. If our ideal could be car- 
ried out, the pupil would eventually be brought in contact 
with the most effective modes of dealing with all the com- 
mon experiences of his daily life. 

There is a further condition which determines the general 
character of an individual's expression, and which is often 
overlooked. I refer to the operation of what Cooley ^ 
has called the " looking-glass I." All of the individual's 
activities are influenced by the way in which he thinks 
they will be received by those who will be most vitally 
affected, and whose reactions he is most interested in. He 
proposes to himself a certain line of conduct, and then 
considers what his associates will say about him. If he 

^ See his "Human Nature and the Social Order," Chap. V. 



294 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



The influ- 
ence of tem- 
perament 
and feeling 
upon style. 



thinks his fellows will praise him for his course, he will 
normally pursue it; if they will criticise him, he will or- 
dinarily abandon it. The principle is as true of linguistic 
expression as it is of any other mode of action. If figurative 
expression will accomplish the most for the individual in 
his special environment, if his friends will reward him 
best for its use, this will be a powerful stimulus for him 
to cultivate it. In his imitative stage, when he has all sorts 
of models before him, the figurative variety will be ap- 
praised most highly and chosen above other varieties; and 
as he grows into the reflective stage he will endeavor 
deliberately to develop this mode of expression. 

Finally, one's temperament, his particular attitude tow- 
ard life, his way of looking at things, will have a more 
or less determining influence upon the characteristics of 
his expression. Indeed, any one person will adopt some- 
what different styles at different times and under different 
conditions. There are undoubtedly special styles befitting 
special occasions and special states of mind; this seems 
commonplace. But the principle cannot be carried too 
far, not as far as Spencer carries it when he says that " sl 
perfectly endowed man must unconsciously write in all 
styles." Johnson is pompous. Goldsmith is simple, be- 
cause the predominant feehngs in each case have trained 
the intellect to represent them. This explains why " one 
author is abrupt, another rhythmical, another concise." 
Spencer appreciates, however, that there is such a thing as 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 295 

fixity of style; Carlyle is Carlylean always, Shakespeare is 
Shakespearean; and so it goes. He maintains, though, 
that this fixity of verbal forms is due to lack of complete 
development in respect to speech, and also in respect to the 
ability of the intellect to fully utter the emotions. When 
this complete development is attained, fixity of style will 
disappear. He would doubtless still maintain, though, 
that in any one man the emotions are normally of a char- 
acteristic type ; no single person can now be Shakespearean 
in his temperament, and now Carlylean, and now Dar- 
winian, and now Tennysonian, and now Spencerian. So, 
even if style depends directly upon the predominant feel- 
ings, we would still have stylistic fixity in individual cases. 
Holmes could never write the Wordsworthian style, except 
by imitating it mechanically, because he could never assume 
the precise intellectual and emotional attitudes of its origi- 
nator.^ Still, if he wished to simulate this style, the first 
requisite would undoubtedly be to endeavor to take the 
point of view of the poet, and to feel as he did. This sug- 
gests that the essential thing in teaching pupils to express 

^ Spencer fails to take due account of this principle, as he expresses his 
views in the following passage {op. cit., pp. 47-48) : "The perfect writer 
will express himself as Junius, when in the Junius frame of mind ; when 
he feels as Lamb felt, he will use a like familiar speech; and will fall into 
the ruggedness of Carlyle when in a Carlylean mood. Now he will be 
rhythmical and now irregular; here his language will be plain and there 
ornate; sometimes his sentences will be balanced and at other times 
unsymmetrical; for a while there will be considerable sameness, and then 
again great variety." 



296 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

themselves according to any particular style is to get them 
as fully as possible into the mental states of those who have 
spontaneously evolved the particular style in question. 
To write like Addison, one must first see English life and 
feel about it as the essayist did. Slight progress will be 
made by imitating his style directly without understand- 
ing what frame of mind and what temperament produced 
it.* 

Summary. i. Efficiency in composition includes more than readiness 

and grammatical accuracy. It includes also those qualities 
which give pleasure to the reader because of their aesthetic value, 
or which incite him to action when this is demanded. 

2. Spencer's theory, that economy of the reader's energy in 
gaining the ideas of the writer is the essential requisite in good 
style, is defective. It undervalues the aesthetic function of lan- 
guage, and also the possibility of arousing and directing emotion 
through linguistic melody, rhythm, and force. 

3. Expression often secures reaction without awakening 
ideas at all. Many slang expressions, for instance, go straight 
to the mark, short-circuiting all ideational processes. 

4. In developing a dynamic style, the pupil must be encour- 
aged to be forceful and effective, rather than merely conven- 
tional. Our language is a real, live, growing one, and we can 
afford to ignore conventional forms at times. 

5. By the age of five the child often begins to enrich his 
speech by calling upon one set of experiences to render more 

^ In this chapter I do not, of course, attempt to discuss writing which 
has for its object to give pleasure merely. For this reason the treatment 
of poetry is omitted. 



DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENCY IN COMPOSITION 297 

appreciable or enjoyable a new experience which he is describ- 
ing. This marks the commencement of figurative expression. 

6. People differ in their tendencies to employ figurative 
expression. One person may have his mental furnishings ar- 
ranged on the principle of contiguity, while another may make 
use more largely of the principle of similarity, which favors 
figurative expression. Again, one may have had only matter- 
of-fact experience with things, while another's experience may 
have been more largely of a poetic character. Temperament 
also has an influence upon the use of figures in expression. 

7. The formal study of rules of expression, with illustrations 
drawn from the world's great literature, has not been of much 
service as it has been conducted in the schools. It has not come 
close enough to the interests and needs of students. 

8. In training for efl&ciency in composition, pupils must ex- 
press themselves freely upon subjects of interest to them, and 
they must have opportunity to say which of a variety of modes of 
expression are most pleasing and effective. They may then 
draw upon all literature which will furnish illustrations of effec- 
tive methods of expressing what they have endeavored to ex- 
press. 



CHAPTER XIII 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 



I. The Attitude of the Individual toward a Foreign 

Tongue 

By a " foreign tongue " is meant any language which 
the individual attacks after he has already acquired one 
which he has employed successfully in intercourse with 
his fellows. Every situation in which the pupil is placed 
when he begins the study of a foreign tongue and every 
idea which he can formulate are more or less intimately 
correlated with linguistic symbols that have effectively 
served the purposes of adjustment in his daily life. All 
his experience translates itself readily, speaking generally, 
into linguistic imagery or execution. But it will be re- 
membered that the infant is entirely lacking in linguistic 
equipment, and as soon as he begins to adapt himself to 
people he may be said to feel profound linguistic needs. 
This puts him into an attitude so that he will seize with 
avidity upon the language used by the people around him. 

But note how different it is with the youth attacking a 
foreign language in his native country. All his thought 
and feeling run automatically for the most part into the 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 299 

linguistic imagery and processes of the mother-tongue, But usually 

,,.-,,- , he feels no 

and there is no felt need of a new tongue to meet the need of the 
requirements of adjustment. The original motive for tongue, 
mastering language cannot be experienced at all, except in 
the rare instances when a pupil must communicate with 
persons who cannot employ his own language, as when he 
moves with his parents to a foreign country. With the 
classic tongues, especially, the primary function of language 
— the communication of experience — is lacking entirely; 
the pupil is not expected to employ them in speaking with 
or writing to his fellows; and their literatures have been 
very largely translated into his own language. If he mas- 
ters them, he must do so for some other purpose than to use 
them practically. The same is true in some measure of 
modern languages, so far as the average high- school and 
university student are concerned; though it would not be 
true in all respects of the student needing to read a foreign 
language in the prosecution of his studies. If, however, 
the latter individual desires only to read the language, 
but is required to apply himself to writing and speaking it, 
he cannot experience the motive for so doing that the child 
does in mastering his native tongue. 

Not only is the individual's attitude toward language on 
the functional side very different as between the native 
tongue and foreign language, but it is very different also 
on the technical side. In learning the mother-tongue he 
reacts to symbols as wholes largely, and he gets the mean- 



300 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

ings of words and phrases without giving much if any 
attention to principles of grammatical construction ex- 
hibited therein. But as he goes on, and especially when 
he enters adolescence, he is very Hkely to gain some feeling 
for grammatical principles, particularly if his attention 
has been called thereto. Originally each word is appre- 
hended without grammatical relations to other words; 
but with increasing Hnguistic experience the resemblances 
in structure of words corresponding with similarity in func- 
tion must be appreciated to a certain extent. He may not, 
and probably does not, do this reflectively, but nevertheless 
his attitude of mind is gradually determined by it. If he 
has studied EngHsh grammar, this attitude is, of course, 
more pronounced, and makes his general method of attack 
upon the foreign tongue directly opposed, to some extent, 
to that of his attack upon the native tongue. The infant 
might be said to be word-minded, while the youth is in a 
measure grammar-minded, in the sense that he is inclined 
to search out the principles of construction of any foreign 
language he is studying.^ 

There is another matter which makes the teaching of a 
foreign language as commonly carried on very different 

^ Sweet ("The Practical Study of Languages," New York, 1900) 
speaks of the "Fallacy of Imitation," p. 5, in learning foreign languages. 
On the other hand, Gouin exalts imitation to the first place in learning 
languages. Paul, " Principien der Sprachgeschichte," Halle, 1886, says, 
p. 89, that we learn living languages more by imitation than by rule. The 
same view is advanced by Storm, "Englische Philologie," Leipzig, 1892. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 30I 

from the teaching of the vernacular. When the child As ordi- 
narily 
enters school he has already employed his native tongue in taught, the 

its auditory and vocal forms most successfully for four or tongue 
five years, and this gives him a foundation upon which to J^ansiated 
base his reading. That is to say, visual verbal forms in ^^^q^^^^^q 
the native tongue may gain meaning through the auditory 
and vocal forms. But the case is, of course, altogether 
different in the teaching of a foreign language in the high 
school, say, when the teacher starts at once, as he often 
does, with the language in all its forms, — vocal, auditory, 
graphic, visual. There being no basis in auditory forms 
with which the visual may be connected to give it content, 
the association must be made with terms in the mother- 
tongue, thus considerably extending the route from vv^ord- 
idea to meaning-idea. Then if the teacher attempts to 
have the pupil pronounce the foreign words, and listen to 
them when they are pronounced, and finally to write them, 
the word-idea itself becomes quite complex without the 
process of reinstating meaning-ideas becoming at all 
simplified. The route from symbol to content, or vice 
versa, must continue to be through the native tongue; ex- 
cept in the case where the language is acquired according 
to the so-called " natural " method, which, however, is not 
in question at this time. We are here concerned alone 
with the method of beginning at once with a text-book, 
and mastering a vocabulary by associating words with 
their nearest equivalents in the native tongue. 



302 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Different Before going further, attention should be called to the 

tea?Wng ^° different purposes which control the teaching of the ancient 
modern ^'^ as compared with the modern tongues. It is generally 
tongues. claimed that the child learns German or French primarily 
for the purpose of employing it in acquiring the ideas which 
are being presented through it; and also for the purpose, 
not so prominent as the first, of communicating his own 
ideas to those who can grasp them only when they come 
through this medium. But these are not the aim.s in the 
study of the classical languages. No people in whom we 
are interested are writing to-day in Latin, or Greek, or 
Hebrew, or Sanscrit; and while some of the best thought of 
the world was presented originally in these languages, still 
that thought is quite limited in its relation to modern hfe 
and interests, and the most of it, all that we think has much 
value for us, has been transferred, with greater or less faith- 
fulness, into modern languages. But the classic languages 
are models of a certain kind of linguistic construction. 
It is generally maintained, and it seems with good reason, 
that they afford a better opportunity for the study of gram- 
mar than do any of the modern languages. Being *' dead," 
their forms are unchangeable, which, of course, is not true 
of any living tongue.* So one may take Latin, for example, 

^ We are coming to see that our own language is very much alive, and 
as a consequence it is incessantly changing. I may quote a few sentences 
from Brander Matthews on this point: — 

"Most of the little manuals," he says, "which pretend to regulate our 
use of our own language and to declare what is and what is not good 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 303 

and study it as a mature thing, whose parts and their 
relations will probably always remain the same, so that 
they may be analyzed and classified like rocks. Thus 
the purpose in their study becomes strictly grammatical 
or philological rather than practical. An engineer studies 
his locomotive so that he may make it serve him ; but the 
physicist may be, and generally is, interested not in the 
practical working of the locomotive, but in the mathemati- 
cal and physical principles it illustrates. The student 
of ancient language treats his subject in the spirit of the 
physicist and not of the engineer. And the two attitudes 
lead to quite different results in teaching. Practical knowl- 
edge always involves the establishing of automatic processes 
in adaptation to concrete situations in daily life ; while 
scientific knowledge requires less facile operations, and 
gives greater prominence to central processes and systems, 
and less prominence, or none at all, to execution. In prac- 

English, are grotesque in their ignorance; and the best of them are of 
small value, because they are prepared on the assumption that the English 
language is dead, like the Latin, and that, like Latin again, its usage is 
fixed finally. Of course, this assumption is as far as possible from the fact. 
The English language is alive now, — very much alive. And because it 
is alive it is in a constant state of growth. It is developing daily according 
to its needs. It is casting aside words and usages that are no longer 
satisfactory ; it is adding new terms as new things are brought forward ; 
and it is making new usages, as convenience suggests, shortcuts across 
lots, and to the neglect of the five-barred gates rigidly set up by our ances- 
tors. It is throwing away, as worn out, words which were once very 
fashionable; and it is giving up grammatical forms which seem to be 
no longer useful." {Op. cit., p. 221.) 



304 



LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



The audi- 
tory and 
vocal 
forms 
should be 
gained at 
the outset. 



tical learning, ideas have value only for the guidance of re- 
actions, and once the reactions get established, the ideas as 
conscious elements disappear. But in scientific knowledge 
ideas as such have supreme and final value, and they 
must be consciously acquired and so retained. 

2. Economy and Efficiency in the Mastery of a Foreign 

Tongue 

It has already been noted that in the learning of the 
mother-tongue the child makes a direct connection between 
the auditory form and the content designated thereby. 
Auditory language is thus made just one element in a uni- 
fied concrete experience, and so it gains the power of di- 
rectly reinstating this experience in the manner worked 
out in detail in preceding chapters. Later, when reading 
is begun, the visual word becomes associated with the au- 
ditory word, and in this way principally it acquires mean- 
ing. To some extent, possibly, visual word-ideas may be 
met directly with meaning-ideas, as when the visual 
symbol horse is learned in immediate connection with the 
object, the auditory word-idea not being given. Now, 
in the teaching of foreign languages, it is customary to in- 
troduce the pupil at the outset to the visual word, which is 
rendered into its auditory and vocal forms; and then it is 
translated into its visual equivalent in the native tongue, 
and this awakens the auditory, and it may be the vocal, 
equivalents, which in turn reinstate the meaning-idea. It 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 305 

will not be necessary to dwell long over the proposition 
that it would promote economy and efficiency if a language, 
to be used practically in the adjustments of daily life, could 
be mastered at the outset in its auditory and vocal forms 
as a medium for the communication of concrete experience. 
This seems to be the only process by which one can gain the 
ability to " think" in any language. The common method 
of teaching a foreign tongue fails to give the learner inde- 
pendence in the language ; he must always fall back upon 
his own tongue. He does not interpret foreign language 
directly; he translates it, and then interprets. 

This leads to the proposition that the highest efficiency 
in the use of a language requires that it be mastered at the 
outset in its oral form ^ as it is employed in the concrete 
situations of daily life. Note that it is not to be gained 
through the native tongue ; the teacher is not to take a text- 
book, pronouncing foreign words and then their native 
equivalents, — not at all; for if he does he will get the pupil 

^ "The immediate aim of the teaching is, then, to enable the learner 
to understand speech in the foreign idiom, and to use it himself as a direct 
instrument of thought. The greatest stress is accordingly laid on exer- 
cise in speaking. The class must hear and use the new language as much 
as possible from the jfirst, and the native speech must only be employed 
in so far as it is absolutely indispensable for the clear comprehension of 
what is taught." Spencer, "Aims and Practice of Teaching," p. 80. 
Sweet, op. cit., Chap. VII, advocates beginning a language with its 
spoken form. Bagster-Collins, "German in Secondary Schools," 
New York, 1904, maintains, pp. 70-71, that the German reform move- 
ment in language teaching attaches great importance to oral work first. 
X 



3o6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

started in the way of translating the language instead of 
interpreting it directly in terms of concrete experience. 
The foreign words should acquire meaning by connecting 
them up immediately with the things and phenomena they 
denote, rather than by working around through the native 
words, though it is not questioned that something can be 
accomplished in this latter way. 
Gaining a But take the case of a student who wishes only a " read- 

knowledge" i^g knowledge " of a foreign tongue. Should he master it 
foreien^ first in its auditory and vocal forms ? Experience shows, 
tongue. a^nd the theory we have already reviewed would lead us 
to the same conclusion, that one may read French, or Ger- 
man, say, without being able to speak it or to understand 
it when spoken. And the psychology of the matter is 
simple enough. When I, an American, look at a French 
or German word for the first time, I will give it some sort 
of '' internal " pronunciation on the principles of my native 
tongue. To illustrate: I see the sentence Je suis tres 
fatigue, and I will mentally audize and vocalize the words 
something as follows : Gee su-is tres (the 5 sounded in both 
cases) jd teeg. Now let a Frenchman pronounce the sen- 
tence, and his speech will awaken in my mind no verbal 
images corresponding to the visual word-ideas of the sen- 
tence. I can do nothing whatever with the oral form. 
If, however, he gave it an Anglicized pronunciation, it 
would reinstate the visual form; and if this was understood, 
I could interpret the sentence as pronounced. The point 



ACQUISITION or A FOREIGN TONGUE 307 

is that the visual word-ideas of a foreign tongue have often 
slight kinship in our minds with their auditory forms, and 
for the most part this kinship must be built up de novo} 

1 "Is it more difficult to pronounce 'boosh' than 'bowch'? Evi- 
dently not. In French, the word written houche (mouth) is pronounced 
hoosh, and not bowch. If, therefore, you pronounce the French word 
houche to me before I have seen how this sound is represented in writing ; 
if the sound hoosh strikes my ears before the letters houche strike my eyes, 
I should have no reason for finding the French pronunciation at all odd, 
though I might, perhaps, its spelling. As is seen, the thing is turned the 
other way round; and if one learns French without being able to read it, 
as the little child does, there will be no longer much greater difficulty in 
pronouncing it than in pronouncing words in English. This is perfectly 
evident. 

" ' How about the spelling ?' you will ask. The spelling ! You would 
learn it as the young French children learn it, as you yourselves have 
learnt the English spelling, ten times more difficult than the French; 
and this without letting the study of the spelling spoil your already ac- 
quired pronunciation. Besides, the spelling is a thing that can be reformed 

— the pronunciation hardly at all. We must choose between the two 
evils. 

"The modern Greek child of four or five years old, who has hardly yet 
left his nurse, does he or does he not know how to pronounce this beautiful 
language better than the most learned of our philologists? Every one 
will answer yes, and our philologist before the others. We will allow this 
child to grow up. We will send him to school, and suppose that he is 
made to begin the study of, say, English. The first thing they will do 
at the school, as we all know, is to put into his hands either a grammar or 
a dictionary, or probably both. 

"How will our scholar read the first English word that comes before 
his eyes ? He will undoubtedly read it in the way he knows how to read 

— as if it were Greek ; he will pronounce it as if it were Greek ; he will 
accentuate it as if it were Greek. How should he do otherwise? And 
this false sound, this false accent, issuing from his mouth, ascends to his 
ears, and is graven, is bitten thereon. And the teacher must be clever 



3o8 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

So one might get the visual forms, translating them into 
English equivalents, and disregard in toto the auditory 
and vocal forms. Of course, there must be some auditory 
and vocal reaction upon the words as seen, but this will be 
in terms of the native tongue ; and so long as these forms 
are not to be used in adjustment, it really makes no differ- 
ence. 

It must be understood that we are here speaking only of 
the individual who will employ the language in but one 
way, — reading. And in this connection we may ask what 
place should be given to composition in the training of one 
who desires but a reading knowledge of the language. 
According to the psychological theories of some teachers, 
one who can compose in a language can read it more easily 
and accurately than one who lacks this ability. But in 
order to write the language, one must be familiar with all 
details of construction. He must have thoroughly mas- 
tered the grammar of the language, and be able to summon 
into the focus of consciousness any of its principles at any 
moment. Usually the pupil, as trained in our high schools, 

who will eflface this first impression. It is, then, the reading which 
does the harm, and the more the child reads and repeats his word, that is, 
the more diligently he works, the more the evil is aggravated, until the 
time may arrive when he becomes absolutely incapable of reform. Our 
young Greek is then condemned for life to pronounce English badly, 
whatever effort he may take, whatever discipline he may submit to. 
Even vsdth our own method it would be extremely difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to alter. The fruit has been vitiated at the germ." F. Gouin, 
"The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages," p. 136. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 309 

does not reach the point where he can compose auto- 
matically, except in the case of a few oft-used phrases, for 
he cannot have sufficient experience in composition. Ob- 
serve a senior in the secondary school writing in any foreign 
tongue, and you will find his mind filled, not with ideas to 
be expressed primarily, but with grammatical formulae. 
Every sentence is a piece of mosaic work to him, and each 
word must be cut into a special form, depending upon the 
space it is to fill. The function of composition in a foreign 
tongue is really to make the pupil vividly conscious of the 
mechanism of sentential construction. 

But in reading one may be able to use the sentence with- 
out being aware of all its mechanical properties. It is a 
simple fact that one may react to grammatical forms with- 
out being able to describe them or place them properly 
in a grammatical system. Test yourself reading any for- 
eign tongue, where the end is attainment of meaning and 
not the mechanics of construction, and you will find that 
the moment you gain a notion of what the thing is about, 
you begin to ignore details of form and take account only 
of the more significant elements in the sentence. You will 
find that your interpretation of particular words is deter- 
mined more by the general body of ideas already aroused 
than by the special words themselves. Take these words 
apart from others and you could not identify them, perhaps ; 
but you have no trouble with them when they appear in a 
context which is within your comprehension. If you will 



3IO LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 



Composi- 
tion may 
prove a 
hinderance 
to reading. 



study your experience, you will discover that when you read 
on any familiar topic, you know when you start on a sub- 
ject therein about what any sentence must mean. Now, 
as you read these sentences you supply out of your own ex- 
perience one-half, perhaps, of what may seem to you to be 
the meaning you are getting from your reading. So a per- 
son may be able to read readily enough in his own specialty 
in a foreign language, but be quite incapable in unfamiliar 
fields, though he uses the same vocabulary in both cases. 

So we reach the conclusion that one may be able to read 
effectively a foreign tongue without having the ability to 
compose with any degree of success therein. Indeed, 
under certain conditions, composition may prove a hin- 
derance to reading ^ by making the individual attentive 
to verbal minutiae that should be reacted to subconsciously 
in reading. Reading is a synthetic process, so far as ver- 
bal forms are concerned; efficiency requires that larger 
and larger verbal units be regarded as wholes. But com- 
position is an analytic process, at least in its early stages; 
and it probably always remains so for the great majority 
of pupils who try to write a foreign tongue. It tends to 



* Kern, in the School Review, April, 1905, pp. 293-307, while favoring 
the "direct" method of teaching modem languages, wherein the pupil is 
made to use the language studied, instead of translating it into his own 
tongue constantly, yet declares that one cannot speak a language fluently 
without being able to write it fluently. The general principles he develops 
so effectively argue against his last proposition, and the experience of daily 
life refutes it. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 311 

make one hesitative in dealing with linguistic forms; it 
gives these forms an unduly prominent place in the atten- 
tion of the novice at any rate. In the study of the classics 
this may be an important aim, and if so, much writing 
should be insisted upon, so that the individual's concern 
with the language will become scientific rather than prac- 
tical. But it is a mistake, founded upon an erroneous 
psychology, to teach Greek and French in the same way, 
when it is desired to acquire the latter as an instrument, 
while the former is studied for its grammatical and philo- 
logical values. Unhappily, the method which has been 
employed in the classics has been applied without material 
modification to the teaching of the modern tongues, as 
the Committee on Modern Languages has pointed out. 
We can do no better at this point, perhaps, than quote a 
pertinent paragraph from the Report of this Committee : — 
" When the modern languages first became a regular 
subject for serious study in secondary schools," it says, 
'' it was natural that teachers, having no other model to 
imitate, should adopt the time-honored plan followed in 
the department of Greek and Latin. According to this 
method, the pupil is first put through a volume of para- 
digms, rules, exceptions, and examples which he learns 
by heart. Only when he has thoroughly mastered this 
book is he allowed to read ; and even his reading is usually 
regarded as a means of illustrating and emphasizing gram- 
matical principles, rather than as a source of inspiration 



312 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

or of literary education. The amount of foreign literature 
studied by the class is, moreover, extremely small; but it 
is all carefully analyzed and translated, every lesson being, 
in general, repeated several times. Composition is used 
as an instrument for increasing still more the student's 
familiarity with inflections and rules. The foreign lan- 
guage is never spoken, and pronunciation is considered 
unimportant." ^ 
Formal We may next consider what place formal grammar and 

and°i?e^ric rhetoric should occupy in the study of a foreign tongue, 
in the study j^ ^j^ doubtless be granted, in the light of what has been 

of a foreign ° ' ° 

tongue. said already, that when the chief aim in the study of a 
language is to master the principles of linguistic construc- 
tion, grammar and rhetoric must be made most prominent 
throughout. In such a case, technique becomes an end in 
itself, not simply a means to an end. Every device, then, 
should be employed to keep the pupil's attention upon ver- 
bal forms, the principles of their formation in the expression 
of typical conceptions, and the syntactical relations of these 
forms in the sentence. This much will be granted without 
further argument. But there may be some who will not 
so readily acquiesce in the proposition that technique 
must be kept constantly in the background when a lan- 
guage is being studied for the purpose of employing it 
with the greatest efficiency in gaining and expressing 

^ Report of the Committee on Modem Languages, in Report of the 
U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1897-1898, p. 1396. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 313 

ideas. There are those who maintain that a pupil can 
never use a language accurately unless he first masters 
its grammar. It is difficult to understand how such 
persons could overlook the fact that children understand 
their mother-tongue very acutely, and speak it very 
fluently and accurately, and read it with ease and effi- 
ciency long before they know a single principle of formal 
grammar or rhetoric. It is one thing to learn correct and 
efficient expression through imitation, wherein principles 
come to be observed without understanding reflectively 
that they are principles; and it is another thing to learn 
these principles formally, and then attempt to consciously 
apply them in linguistic activity. It is with language as 
with any art; it may be practised effectively before the 
science upon which it is founded is understood.^ Why do 
not the grammarians take some account of the fact that 
German and French children learn their native tongue on 
the art side first, and then study its grammar and rhetoric 
afterwards, not so much for practical as for cultural 
reasons ? 

But does this mean that technique should be eliminated 

* Cf . the following : " Grammar, too, is taught according to its essen- 
tial nature. Itself but a convenient abstract of the facts of language, it 
must only be studied with reference to language-material which is already 
familiar to the learner. In the preliminary stages of language-teaching 
it thus assumes a very subordinate place, and its function remains a 
subsidiary one throughout the whole course." Spencer, "Aims and 
Practice of Teaching," p. 80. 



314 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

altogether in foreign language study? It may doubtless 
be dispensed with entirely in the teaching of young chil- 
dren, say before the age of twelve/ when they are not at 
all analytical of linguistic forms and relations, but are 
merely imitative, readily appropriating whatever is pre- 
sented to them concretely. They will be hindered rather 
than helped by giving attention to anything but the use 
of language in vital situations. It is different with older 
pupils, however, for reasons pointed out in another place. 
It was said there that in the course of linguistic develop- 
ment the individual becomes more or less grammatical- 
minded, which means that he is ready and even eager for 
linguistic principles, and it will prove of advantage to him 
if he can gain them early according as he needs them. It is 
implied in this statement that the pupil must first have ex- 

* It may be remarked that a modem language should usually be begun 
before the age of twelve, for reasons which the Committee on Modern 
Languages has well stated. " One who wishes to acquire a modern lan- 
guage thoroughly," the Report says, "will always do well to begin in child- 
hood. The later period of youth is distinctly a bad time to begin. In 
childhood the organs of speech are still in a plastic condition. Good 
habits are easily formed; bad habits more easily corrected. Forms of 
expression are readily mastered as simple facts. Later in life, in propor- 
tion as the mind grows stronger, it also grows more rigid. The habit of 
analyzing and reasoning interferes more or less with the natural receptivity 
of the child. The fixation of speech habits in the mother tongue makes it 
increasingly difficult to acquire even a moderately good pronunciation, 
and perfection is usually out of the question." Report of the Committee 
on Modern Languages, in Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, 1897-1898, p. 1047. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 315 

perience with the language before he studies its grammar. 
It will mean little to him, and he will make but indifferent 
progress in possessing himself of it, until he has by actual 
contact with the language gained enough of concrete exam- 
ples to illumine the principles. Then he will welcome them. 
They will help him to generalizations which he would him- 
self reach in time, but which he can appreciate and use at 
this juncture in his learning. Let any doubter try this 
experiment : take two pupils of equal ability, so far as one 
can tell, and teach them French, say. Let one study the 
grammar for a year, without employing his principles ex- 
cept to drill in applying them in isolated and merely for- 
mal sentences. Then let the second pupil begin, as soon 
as he has a little vocabulary, to read some interesting story. 
When he has gone a short distance, let the teacher pick out 
the half-dozen most prominent grammatical principles 
illustrated in the reading and have the pupil learn them, 
using for illustrations the constructions in the passages 
read. Note which pupil learns the principles most readily 
and willingly, and which can employ them most effectively. 
Such an experiment will show, I believe, that a pupil will 
appropriate a grammatical principle when it will generalize 
his experiences in his efforts to use the language for valu- 
able ends. Thus the pupil's need must always furnish the 
occasion for and the stimulus to the study of technique; ^ 

^ " In the teaching of grammar the most important principle to be kept 
in view is that the grammar is there for the sake of the language, and not 



31 6 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

but on the other hand, this study must keep close to the 
need, and supply it readily, or waste must result. The so- 
called " inductive ^' method is deficient just because it 
does not bring succor to the pupil soon enough. It attempts 
to have him discover all principles without aid from the 
book or the teacher; and while this can be done, of course, 
still the pupil wastes time in doing it without adequate com- 
pensation. 
Intensive- One matter remains to be considered, and this relates to 

n«3s '/s. ex- 

tensiveness the question of intcnsivcness vs. extensiveness in the early 

in the read- 
ing of a for- Study of a foreign tongue. Should the pupil read little, 

with very detailed, critical grammatical study, or should he 
read much, with less critical examination of technique ? 
Many teachers hold that without minute critical st^'^^y from 
the beginning, careless habits will be formed, Lad the 
pupil's knowledge of the language will always be inaccu- 
rate, and so comparatively useless. Further, he cannot 
grasp the meaning of what is being read ,without this 
exact study of forms and syntactical relations.^ But expe- 

the language for the sake of the grammar. The recitation of paradigms, 
rules, and exceptions is always in danger of degenerating into a facile 
routine in which there is but little profit. The important thing is not that 
the learner should acquire facility in telling off paradigms, quoting state- 
ments, and explaining principles according to the book, but that he should 
acquire facility in understanding and using the language." Report of the 
Committee on Modem Languages, op. cit.,-p. 1414. 

^ Sweet, op. cit., seems to indorse this view, probably because he is, 
above everything else, a philologist and phonetician. He appears to be 
interested primarily in the mastery of a language phonetically. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 317 

rience and psychological theory alike maintain that ex- 
tensive reading of a language will yield better results, 
since the learner thus encounters forms and constructions 
in relatively many situations, and in this way he becomes 
able to properly interpret them. Moreover, following this 
latter method, the pupil's interests are aroused, as they 
cannot be by the former method, since by rapid reading he 
gains more of the content of the language, — he gets into 
more intimate touch with the life of the people portrayed 
through what he reads, and accordingly the language itself 
acquires a meaning for him. Now, the problem involved 
here can be solved only when we keep in mind the purpose 
of our language study. If it be to gain knowledge of a 
philolo}- ' al character, then minute critical study with very 
little reuding has its place ; although even here something 
may be said in favor of extensive reading, on the principle 
that a phenomenon repeated a dozen times in different con- 
nections will establish itself in the individual's thought more 
clearly and definitely than if it be encountered but once 
in a single relation and then dwelt upon at length. But 
the student of modern language who is aiming to acquire 
a mastery of it for purposes of ready use should certainly 
put his energy upon extensive rather than intensive study.^ 
If it be legitimate — not only this, but eminently de- 

* Cf. the following: "The first difficulty of practical importance in 
teaching German grammar relates to the gender and declension of nouns. 
If the attempt is made to master the gender and declension of every 



3l8 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Literal sirable — that we do not attempt to be too precise and 

translation , , , . , -, r r • ^ 

of a foreign thorough at the outset m the study of a foreign language, 
ongue. ^^^^ ^j^^^^ .^ ^ further principle of method which is of 

much importance. Those teachers who attach supreme 
importance to technique always insist upon literal trans- 
lation of everything that is read. According to their phi- 
losophy, there is no other way to read a language. But 
they take a narrow view of the matter. It is manifestly 
possible for me to get the substance of a paragraph and 
state it in phrases of my own choosing, though these are 
not close translations of the original. And this is the sort 
of experience that will prove of greatest value to me in 
preparation for the needs of life outside the school. The 
only reason why I should translate in a routine way at all 

noun that is met with, either progress will be very slow (as in case 
of German children learning the mother-tongue), or the learner's 
memory soon becomes overtaxed. Trying to remember everything, 
he soon ceases to remember anything with absolute confidence. The 
best way to deal with this difficulty is to concentrate attention from the 
start upon those nouns that belong to the language of every-day life, — 
the names of familiar objects, relationships, and ideas, — to make sure 
of these and let the others go. A list of Such nouns can be made out 
which need not contain more than, say, three hundred words. The pupil 
who at the end of a two years' course has really learned that number of 
nouns, so that the right gender and the right plural come to him instantly, 
has done quite enough. More should not be expected by the college 
examiner, so far as concerns those nouns the gender and declension of 
which cannot be determined by inspection. It is of course assumed that 
the candidates will know about nouns in chen, lein, ei, heit, keit, in, schajt, 
ung. Whether he knows any other rules for gender is not very important." 
Report of Committee on Modern Languages, op, cit., p. I4i4« 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 319 

is that I may show in just what particular I may not have 
correctly appreciated the original. If no defect or de- 
ficiency appears in my statement of the substance of what 
I have read, it results only in waste for me to go through 
a passage, giving an account of the grammatical properties 
of every term. The Committee on Modern Languages ^ 
has spoken wisely on this point, and I may quote a para- 
graph:— 

" How long and to what extent should the routine trans- 
lation of good German into tolerable English be insisted 
on in the class room? The answer is: so long as and 
whenever the teacher is uncertain whether the meaning of 
the original is understood. If there is complete certainty 
that the learner can translate his passage of German into 
tolerable English, it is, as a rule, not worth while to have 
him do it; the time can be used to better advantage. An 
exception may be made, of course, in the case of pupils 
who are for any reason unusually backward in their Eng- 
lish, or for such as may be suspected of not preparing their 
lessons. But for capable pupils who have a right attitude 
toward their teacher and their work, there presently comes 
a time when the routine translation in class of what they 
have previously prepared ceases to be profitable. They 
learn no new German in the process, and they do not im- 
prove their command of English. For A, B, C, and D, 
who have prepared their lessons and know perfectly well 
* Op. at., p. 1418. 



320 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

how to translate a given passage, to sit in the class while 
E actually translates it means a waste of time. When that 
stage is reached, it is time to drop the systematic translation i| 
of the entire lesson in class, to call only for the rendering jj 
of words or passages that are liable to be misunderstood, I 
and to use the time thus gained in some exercise more profit- , 
able than superfluous translation." 

3. Lessons from Europe in the teaching of Larjuage 

Practical ys. European countries, and especially France and G ^rmany, ' 
values. can give American teachers valuable lessons on the effec-' 

tive teaching of foreign languages. These peoples have 
learned through much vital experience that the elaborate !■ 
study of grammatical principles, while of scientific value,? 
may yet leave the pupil quite inefiicient in the use of a|- 
language. The pursuit of technical minutiae may yield' 
philological knowledge of worth to the specialist, but the| 
mastery of a language is not acquired in this manner. The 
Europeans have discovered that their welfare depends in 
considerable measure upon their being able to understand 
and employ the every- day speech and writing of their 
neighbors, and this determines their teaching largely.^ 
Speaking generally, they keep constantly in mind the prac-" 
tical value of a living language, and the pupil is encouraged 
to use it almost from the start.^ He does not first memorize 

*The modern school of linguistic teachers in Germany do not favor 
much translation in learning a modern language. See, for instance, Victor, '^ 
"Der Sprachunterricht Muss Umkehren," p. 31, Heilbronn, 1886. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 32 1 

a body of grammatical rules, and then proceed to apply 
them in a mechanical manner; the rules are acquired 
for the most part after some familiarity has been gained 
with the language as a means of expression. Most of the 
teachers whose work I have observed proceed on the prin- 
ciple that a young pupil must have at least a slight eye, ear, 
and vocal acquaintance with a language before he can 
advantageously study its grammar. 

One may visit classes in the Lycee in France, or the 
Gymnasium in Germany, where he will hear only the 
English language employed — and good English, too — 
during an entire recitation. He will find that the teachers 
use idiomatic EngHsh with comparative ease and fluency, 
and the pupils read and converse in the language without 
marked difiiculty or hesitancy. It seems a mere matter 
of course in these classes that all are to use, as the medium 
of communication, the language being studied, and not 
simply memorize and illustrate rules concerning it, as we 
so frequently do in America. Having in mind the work 
in our own country, I have been often much impressed 
with the facility of these people, teachers and pupils, in the 
handling of a foreign tongue. They do not go blundering 
along, striving to remember and apply formula they have 
acquired as a consequence of diligent memorizing. On the 
contrary, their ears and tongues early become accustomed 
by actual experience to grasp and employ the language 
in an automatic way; and this alone can give mastery 



322 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of any living language. He who interprets or speaks by 
rule, consciously and deliberately, will get on badly in 
most linguistic situations in which he may be placed. 
Beginning These Europeans begin the study of modern languages 
of language earlier than we do, and this is of immense advantage in the 
®" ^' achievement of their principal aim — the acquisition of a 

language for purposes of ready and effective intercourse. 
We start languages late, and we do not expect to use them 
practically, partly because we imagine that formal lin- 
guistic study is good for "mental discipline," and partly 
because we have a notion that familiarity with the gram- 
mar of a foreign tongue is essential to any sort of compre- 
hension of our own language. These aims lead us greatly 
to exalt technique, and to minimize fluent expression, and 
ready and effective interpretation through eye and ear. 
If we should introduce our pupils to French and German in 
the elementary school, say in the seventh grade, we would 
be forced to adopt more efficient methods of presentation. 
We would lead them to a sense of the use of the language 
as a means of communication; and we would make them 
acquainted with it more synthetically, so that they would 
realize what was to be done with it, before we proceeded to 
treat it anatomically. 
Thedis- It must prove more or less disastrous to the effective 

of early ^^^ employment of a living language to devote the time at the 
stuS°^^*^^^* outset principally to its grammatical study. This method 
inevitably handicaps the pupil, since he is made conscious 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 323 

of details of construction that ought not to be prominently 
in the attention at all. One taught in this way becomes 
rule-minded; he acquires the grammatical habit of attack, 
and this leads to confusion when he is required to speak or 
interpret rapidly. The grammatical method made unduly 
prominent at the outset forces the attention on to the ele- 
mentary units in language ; but, in actual use, one should be 
aware of only leading features. As we have already seen, 
a good reader in the native tongue, or a foreign tongue 
either, is never explicitly aware of all the details of every 
word he reads; far from it. He seizes upon groups of 
words as units, and ignores a large body of minutiae. But 
in the case of a pupil with whom technique has been mag- 
nified in the beginning, these minutiae fill his vision and 
hearing, and prevent the ready grasping of the larger uni- 
ties, which alone have meaning. However, if one has first 
gained this hold on a language, so that he strikes at what 
is significant rather than at isolated details, then he may 
study its technique without losing himself in these details. 
His early-formed habits will save him from such a catas- 
trophe, as is seen in the case of the child who has learned 
in the usual way to speak his native tongue, and who later 
on studies its grammar. 

The point will bear repetition, that the Europeans have 
a strong practical motive for mastering modern languages, 
and this has compelled them to abandon in many places 
the formal, mechanical methods of teaching which still 



324 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

persist so generally with us. The French, Germans, 
English, and Italians are so closely associated in all their 
activities, social and commercial, that they keenly feel the 
need of being able to use one another's language. It is 
not a theoretical matter with them at all. They are not 
spending much time over the question, so prominent with 
us, — Can one understand his own tongue without studying 
the grammar of a foreign tongue? The French need to 
understand English, for instance, when they hear it; and 
they must be able to read it, and to speak it on occasion; 
and they go to work with these ends in view to master it 
in the most economical way; and the principle applies 
to other nations and languages. Modern languages are 
as practical and necessary in Europe as arithmetic or spell- 
ing is in our own country, and this makes it easier to teach 
them rationally. It is not quite clear to our people that 
the German language, say, is of value anyway; and, con- 
sidering the results of our system of teaching it, there is 
certainly reason for doubt regarding its utility. But, of 
course, we must have some sort of philosophy to indorse 
our practice, and so we fall back on the abstruse doctrines 
of " mental discipline," and the vicarious mastery of the 
native tongue. 

In accordance with their general plan of learning a lan- 
guage by employing it as the natives do, the European 
peoples are adopting a scheme for the interchange of lan- 
guage teachers which promises to be of immense advan- 



ACQUISITION or A FOREIGN TONGUE 325 

tage. The plan is this: France, as an example, takes a 
certain number of graduates of Oxford and Cambridge 
every year, and places them in the Lycees to give instruc- 
tion in English. England, in turn, takes a certain number 
of graduates of the Sorbonne and other French universities 
to give instruction in French in her secondary schools. 
These instructors remain in their respective positions for 
two or three years, perhaps, and at a small salary, since 
they are glad to gain experience in this way. It is thought 
that all modern languages in the schools of the important 
European countries will soon be taught by native teachers 
selected in this manner. 

I have spoken of the teaching of modern languages Natural- 
only, but it is probable that the classics are, on the whole, Caching 
more efficiently taught in Europe than they are in most {^uages 
places with us. At Eton, in England, one may see classes 
of boys not over twelve years of age listening with evident 
appreciation and enjoyment to stories read and told them 
in Latin by the masters. Latin is used there as a real lan- 
guage, and not as a mass of dead material suitable only 
for mental discipline; though the grammar is thoroughly 
studied, of course. The masters talk freely, easily, and 
naturally in Latin, and the pupils often respond in the 
same way. I think I came nearer at Eton to feeling 
that Latin could actually be used in the interchange of ideas 
than I ever did before. How many of the pupils in the 
classics in our secondary schools ever acquire a sense of the 



326 LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

naturalness and vitality of the languages? If you are a 
Latin teacher, ask yourself whether the language is for your 
pupils something very remote from everything that they 
regard as human and desirable. Of course, we need some 
sort of philosophy again to appease our consciences and an 
economical public, and so we cry aloud that pupils ought 
for their soul's health to study subjects far removed from 
everything of real, vital interest. Happily, though, we are 
growing away from this contention, at least in some parts 
of the country, where teachers have caught the new spirit 
of teaching language, whether ancient or modern. The 
teachers of the Old World are most skilful in elaborating 
high-sounding but empty reasons for their archaic way of 
doing many things in education; but one rarely hears any- 
thing of the kind in reference to the teaching of modern 
languages, concerning which the force of circumstances 
has compelled them to take a sensible view. 

1. The child usually has a very different attitude toward 
learning a foreign tongue from what he has toward learning the 
mother-tongue ; he always feels the need of the latter, while he 
rarely appreciates that the former will be of service to him. 

2. With development, the individual becomes ever more 
grammar-minded, as it were, so that, if he does not begin the 
study of a foreign language until late, he tends to learn it by 
mastering its principles. 

3. When one learns a new language visually and gram- 
matically, he is compelled to always translate the language into 
his own tongue. He cannot ''think" in the new language. 



ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN TONGUE 327 

4. As taught in our country, ancient language is never 
designed to be used ; it is learned for its grammatical or philo- 
logical value. But modern languages are taught, ostensibly, 
so that they may be employed in social intercourse. 

5. In the acquisition of a foreign tongue for practical 
purposes, economy and efficiency demand that it be learned in 
its auditory and vocal forms first. 

6. When it is desired to gain a reading knowledge only 
of a foreign tongue, it is wasteful to devote time to "composi- 
tion." Indeed, composition may prove a disadvantage in learn- 
ing to read. 

7. One interested in a language for philological reasons 
should do intensive work in it; but one who wishes to use the 
language should make his study extensive rather than inten- 
sive. It is a mistake to give constant attention to every minute 
detail of a language if one wishes to gain ready and practical 
mastery of it. 

8. The Europeans have progressed beyond us in teach- 
ing languages effectively. In teaching modern languages they 
attach principal importance to practical as contrasted with 
philological values. 

9. They begin the study of modern languages earlier than 
we do, and employ the "natural" method in presentation. 

10. They realize that when the grammatical method is made 
too prominent at the outset, it handicaps the individual by 
making him unduly conscious of minutiae which he ought to 
take account of only marginally. 

11. Even the classic languages are taught in a natural way 
in some of the schools in Europe, and in consequence pupils 
gain a readier and more complete mastery of them than they 
do in our country. ' 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The more important books and articles referred to in this volume are 
listed below. These references may be grouped into several classes, 
which are appropriately designated so that the reader may, if unfamiliar 
with the literature in this field, choose his readings in accordance with his 
special interests. To begin with, there are the references that treat of 
some phase of linguistic development in the proper sense, — that trace 
the changes which occur as the individual evolves, and that attempt to 
show the causal connections between the phenomena described. Then 
there are references, articles only, that present statistics, without develop- 
mental interpretations, of children's vocabularies at different stages of 
development. Next there are references that treat of language anthropo- 
logically; that discuss one or another phase of linguistic function and 
development among primitive peoples. There are also a few studies 
presenting the results of laboratory investigations upon the learning of 
language. A number of the works cited treat of the psychology of lan- 
guage in general, without special reference to questions of development. 
Several books that treat of the neurological bases of language have been 
included. There are a number of references in the list that deal with lan- 
guage in all its phases from the standpoint wholly of the grammarian or 
the rhetorician or the philologist. A number of the references treat of 
the pathological phases of language function, with linguistic defects and 
disorders, whether congenital or due to the result of accident or disease. 
Finally, there are those books and articles which treat of questions of 
teaching language in one or another of its aspects. Some of the references 
may be placed in several of these groups, and this fact is properly indicated 
in every case. A denotes references predominantly anthropological in 
character; D those predominantly developmental in character; E those 
predominantly educational in character; G those predominantly lin- 
guistic in character; L those predominantly experimental in character; 
P those predominantly psychological in character; 5 those predomi- 

329 



330 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

nantly statistical in character; X those predominantly pathological in 
character ; N those predominantly neurological in character. 



Aldrich: Children's Reading. Educational Review, Vol. 14. 
(E.) 

Allaire: Des Premiers Rudiments du langage infantin. 
BuU. Soc. d'Anthr. de Paris, 1884. (D.) 

Ament : Die Entwickelung von Sprechen und Denken beim 
Kinde, p. 213. (Leipzig, 1898.) (D. P.) 

Aston: The Origin of Language: London Journal Anthr. 
Inst., Vol. XXIII, pp. 332-362. (A.) 

Bagley : The Apperception of the Spoken Sentence. Amer. 
Journ. of Psych., Vol. XII and Reprint. (L. P.) 

Bagster and Collins : German in Secondary Schools. (New- 
York, 1904.) (E.) 

Bain: Education as a Science, Chapters on Rhetoric and 
Literature. (New York, 1879.) (^0 

On Teaching English. (London, 1887.) (E.) 

Baldwin: Mental Development. Social and Ethical Inter- 
pretations, Part II, Chaps. Ill and IV. (New York,'i9o6.) (P.) 

Mental Development in the Child and the Race, Meth- 
ods and Processes, Chap. XIV. (New York, 1895.) (P.) 

Ballet: Le Langage Interieur, et les diverses formes de 
Paphasie. (Paris, 1886.) (P. X.) 

Balliet: Some Association Tracks involved in Reading and 
Spelling; Addresses and Proceedings of the National Educa- 
tional Association, 1893. (P- E.) 

Barnes : How Words get Meaning ; in Studies in Education, 
Vol. I. (Stanford University.) (S. P.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 33 1 

Bawden: A Study of Lapses. Psych. Rev., Monograph 
Supplement No. 14. (L. P.) 

Binet: Preceptions d'enfant. Revue Philosophique, Vol. 
XXX. (1890.) (L. P.) 

Bolton, F. E. : Secondary School System of Germany. 
(New York, 1900.) (E.) 

Bosanquet: Essentials of Logic. (London, 1895.) (A.) 

Breese: On Inhibition, Psych. Rev., Vol. Ill, and Mono- 
graph Supplement. (P.) 

Brinton: Essays of an Americanist, p. 396. (Philadelphia, 
1890.) (A.) 

Bryan and Harter : Studies in the Physiology and Psychology 
of the Telegraphic Language. Psych. Rev., Jan., 1897, Vol. 
IV, and July, 1899, Vol. VI. (L. P. E.) 

Cattell : Uber die Zeit der Erkennung und Bennennung, etc. 
Philosophische Studien, Vol. I. (L.) 

Chamberlain: Studies of a Child. Ped. Sem.,Vol.XI. (S.) 

Chambers: How Words get Meaning. Ped. Sem., March, 
1904, Vol. XL (P. E.) 

Chrisman: The Secret Language of Children. Century 
Magazine, Vol. LVI. (1898.) (D.) 

Science, Vol. XXII. (D.) 

Chubb: The Teaching of English in the Elementary and 
the Secondary School, p. 71. (New York, 1900.) (P. E.) 

Collins: The Genesis and Dissolution of the Faculty of 
Speech, p. 64. (London, 1897.) (N. X. P.) 

Committee on Modern Languages, Report of — in the 
Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1897- 
1898. (E. P.) 



332 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Compayr^: Development of the Child in Later Infancy 
(trans, by Wilson), pp. 72-73. (New York, 1902.) (D. P.) 

Cook, A. S. : The Teaching of English. Atlantic Monthly, 
Vol. 87. (E.) 

Cooley : Human Nature and the Social Order, Chaps. V and 
VI. (New York, 1902.) (P.) 

Cornman: Spelling in the Elementary School. (Boston, 
1902.) (E. P.) 

Corson: The Aims of Literary Study. (New York, 1895.) 
(G. E.) 

Darwin : Biographical Sketch of an Infant. Mind, Vol. II. 

(S. p.) 

Dearborn: The Psychology of Reading, Chaps. IV-XIII. 
(New York, 1907.) (L. P.) 

Deahl, J. N. : Imitation in Education : Its Nature, Scope, 
and Significance, pp. 73-83. Columbia University Contribu- 
tions to Philosophy, Psychology, and Education. (New York, 
1900.) (P. E.) 

De Brath: The Foundations of Success. (London, 1896.) 
(E.) 

Dewey: The Primary School Fetich. Forum, Vol. 25. 
(P. E.) 

The Elementary School Teacher. (E.) 

The School and Society. (Chicago, 1899.) (E.) 

The Psychology of Infant Language. Psych. Rev., 

Vol. I. (D. P.) 

Egger: Observations et reflexions sur le development de 
I'intelligence et du langage chez les enfants. (Paris, 1877.) 
(D. E.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 

Elder: Aphasia and the Cerebral Speech Mechanism. 
(London, 1897.) (N. X. P.) 

Fernald: How Spelling Damages the Mind. Popular 
Science Monthly, Vol. 27. (P. E.) 

Franke: Die Praktische Spracherlernung auf Grund der 
Psychologic und der Physiologic der Sprache, Leipzig, 1896, 
3d Ed. (P. E.) 

Gouin: The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages. 
Eng. Trans, by Swan and Betis. (London, 1892.) (P. E.) 

Guibert : Mental Evolution, in Bull. Soc. d'Anthr. de Paris, 
1892. (A.) 

Hall, G. S. : How to Teach Reading. (Boston, 1901.) 
(E. P.) 

The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School. 

Ped. Sem., Vol. I. (S. E.) 

Study of Infants. Ped. Sem., Vol. I. (S. D.) 

Hall, Mrs. W. S. : First Five Hundred Days of a Child's Life. 
Child Study Monthly, Vol. II, May, 1896-April, 1897. (D. S.) 

Hart: Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 
of America, N. S., Vol. IV. (1895.) (E.) 

Hill: Our EngHsh. (New York, 1889.) (G. E.) 

Hinsdale: Teaching the Language- Arts : Speech, Reading, 
Composition. (New York, 1896.) (P. E.) 

Holden: Vocabularies of Children of Two Years of Age. 
Trans. Am. Phil. Assn., 1877. (S.) 

Huey: On the Psychology and Physiology of Reading. 
Amer. Journ. of Psych., Vol. 54. (P. E.) 

Humphreys: A Contribution to Infantile Linguistics. 
Trans. Am. Phil. Assn., 1880. (S.) 



334 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

James: The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular 
Philosophy. (New York, 1897.) (P.) 

Janet: Revue Philosophique, November, 1892. (X.) 

Jastrow : Speech and its Defects. Diet, of Phil, and Psych., 
Vol. II. (X.) 

Johnson : Old-time Schools and School-books. (New York, 
1904.) (E.) 

Kern: School Review, April, 1905. (E.) 

Kirkpatrick: Fundamentals of Child Study, Chap. XIII. 
(New York, 1903.) (D. P.) 

Kussmaul: Die Storungen der Sprache. (Leipzig, 1885.) 
(D. N. X.) 

Laurie: Lectures on Language and Linguistic Methods in 
the Schools, 2d Ed., revised. (Edinburgh, 1893.) (P. E.) 

Le Fevre: Race and Language. (New York, 1894.) 
(A.) 

Lewis : A First Book in Writing English. (E.) 

Lichtheim: Aphasia, Brain, January, 1885. (X. P.) 

Locke, John: Thoughts on Education, Sects. 168, 188, 189. 
Edited by R. H. Quick. (Cambridge, 1880.) (E.) 

Lukens : Preliminary Report on the Learning of Language. 
Ped. Sem., Vol. III. (D. P.) 

Major: First Steps in Mental Growth, Chap. XV. (New 
York, 1906.) (D.) 

Mantegazza: Physiognomy and Expression. (London.) 

(P.) 

Matthews : Parts of Speech, in Essays on English. (G.) 
Meiklejohn: The English Language, its Grammar, etc. 
(Boston, 1887.) (G.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 

Meumann: Die Entstehung der ersten Wortbedeutungen 
beim Kinde, p. 69. (Leipzig, 1902.) (D. P.) 

Moore: Mental Development of a Child. Monograph 
Supplement to the Psychological Review, No. 3, 1896. (S. D.) 

Mueller: Science of Thought. (A.) 

O'Shea : Dynamic Factors in Education, Chap. IX. (New 
York, 1906.) (S. D.) 

Education as Adjustment. (New York, 1904.) (P.) 

Ounf : Journ. of Nervous and Mental Diseases, March, 1897. 
(X.) 

Patrick: Should Children under Ten Learn to Read and 
Write? Pop. Sci. Mo., Vol. 54. (P. E.) 

Paul: Principien der Sprachgeschichte. (Halle, 1806.) 
(A. P.) 

Powell : Evolution of Language. Trans, of the Anthr. Soc. 
of Washington, 1880. (A.) 

Preyer : The Development of the Mind of the Child, Vol. II. 
(New York, 1889.) (S. D.) 

Quantz: Problems in the Psychology of Reading. Psy- 
chological Review, Vol. II, and Monograph Supp. (P.) 

Reeder, R. R. : Historical Development of the School Readers 
and Methods in Teaching Reading. In Columbia University 
Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology, and Education, 
Vol. VIII, No. 2. (E.) 

Some Essentials of Good Reading. Pub. School 

Journ., Vol. 12. (E.) 

Rice: The Public School System of the U. S. (New York, 
1893.) (E.) 

Futility of the Spelling Grind. Forum, Vol. 23. (S. E.) 



2,^6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Romanes: Mental Evolution in Man. (New York, 1899.) 
(A.) 

Russell, J. E. : German in the Higher Schools of Germany. 
School Review, Vol. 2. (E.) 

German Higher Schools, Chap. XII. (New York, 

1899.) (E.) 

Rzensitzek: Zur Frage der Psychischen Entwickelung der 
Kindersprache. (Breslau, 1899.) i^- ^0 

Salisbury: A Child's Vocabulary. Educational Review, 
Vol. VII. (1894.) (S.) 

Sayce: Grammar; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Ed., Vol. 
XI. (A.) 

Schultze: Die Sprache des Kindes. (Leipzig, 1880.) 
(D. P.) 

Scott, Harriet M., and Gertrude Buck : Organic Education, 
Chap. V. (Boston, 1899.) (E.) 

Scudder, H. E. : Academic Treatment of the English Lan- 
guage. Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 74. (E.) 

Secor: Amer. Journ. of Psych., Vol. XL (L.) 

Shinn: Biography of a Baby, Chap. XII. (Boston, 1900.) 
(D.) 

Sigismund: Kind und Welt. (Braunschweig, 1897.) 
(D.) 

Spencer: Philosophy of Style. (New York, 1877.) (P. E.) 

Spencer, Frederick (Editor) : Chapters on the Aims and Prac- 
tice of Teaching, Chap. IV. (Cambridge, 1897.) (E.) 

Storm: English Philologie. (Leipzig, 1892.) (L.) 

Strieker: Studien iiber die Sprachvorstellungen. (Wien, 
1880.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 

Sully: Studies in Childhood, Chap. V. (New York, 1896.) 
(D.) 

Sweet : A Practical Study of Languages. (New York, 1900.) 
(G. E.) 

Sweet, Henry: A Handbook on Phonetics, including an 
Exposition of the Principles of the Spelling Reform. (Oxford, 
1877.) (G.) 

Swift : Studies in the Psychology and Physiology of Learn- 
ing. Reprint from Amer. Journ. of Psych., April, 1903, Vol. 
XIV. (L. E.) 

The Acquisition of Skill in Typewriting. Psych. Rev., 

August 15, 1904. (L. E.) 

Titchener: An Outline of Psychology. (New York, 1896.) 

(P.) 

Tracy: Amer. Jour, of Psych., Vol. IV. (S. D.) 

Trettien : Psychology of the Language Interests of Children. 
Ped. Sem., June, 1904, Vol. XL (D. P. E.) 

Valentin: Psychology of the Child. Revue des Etudes 
Philos. et Soc, March, 1898. (P.) 

Victor: Der Sprachunterricht muss Umkehren! (Heil- 
bronn, 1866.) (E.) 

Whitney: Philology; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Ed., 
Vol. XVIII. (G.) 

Wilson: Prehistoric Art. Report U. S. Nat. Mus., 1896. 
(A.) 

Wylie: The Disorders of Speech. (Edinburgh, 1894.) 
(N. X. P.) 



INDEX 



Abstract symbols, often given concrete 
meaning by child, 129. 

Adjective, earliest use of, 60-63; ^^- 
flectionof, 105-110; inflected forms 
first used, 107-108; the superla- 
tive degree, 108-110. See Differ- 
entiation, Function, Modifier. 

Adverb, earliest use of, 63-64; in- 
flection of, 105-110. See Adjective, 
Differentiation, Function, Modifier. 

Esthetic function, of language, 279- 
285. 

Agreement, among children in first 
vocal combinations, 8 ; in early 
speech, 110-113; violations of 
principles of concord, 110-112; 
principle involved, 111-112; the 
relative pronoun, 11 2-1 13; order 
of appearance of relative pronouns, 

113- 

Allaire, on the rudiments of infant 
language, 5; on the origin of words, 
28. 

Alphabet, devices for learning, 170- 
171; historic schemes for teaching, 
174-177; wastefulness of alphabetic 
method, 177-178. See Language 
unities. 

Alter, interpretation of expression of, 
17-18; reaction of in determining 
meaning, 137-142. 

Ament, on the evolution of speech 
and thought, 5 ; on first use of pro- 
nouns, 73. 

Aphasias, interdependence of lin- 
guistic modes revealed in, 199-202. 

Apperception, in the use of adjectives, 
60; in reaction upon words of 
similar form and content, 142-144; 
of specialized terms, 144-146. 

Aston, on the origin of human speech, 

55- 
Automaticity, in graphic word-ideas, 

195-196; in reading, 223-225. 
Au3aliary verbs, dynamic forms used 

first, 102-103. 

Bagley, on imitation of differentiated 
speech, 50; on the interjection, 56; 



on the apperception of the spoken 
sentence, 184. 

Bain, on rhetorical teaching, 292. 

Baldwin, on play as a preparation for 
mature life, 26; on linguistic in- 
vention, 31-32; on tracery imita- 
tion, 171. 

Barnes, on content of familiar words, 
148-154. 

Brinton, on pronouns in aboriginal 
American languages, 74. 

Cattell, on short words being read 
more easily than letters, 177. 

Chamberlain, on a child's use of 
pronouns, 80; on content of chil- 
dren's words, 134-136. 

Chambers, on child's vocabulary, 140- 
142 ; on content of children's words, 
154-158; on use of dictionary, 220 
(Note); on growth of content in 
words, 222. 

Chrisman, on children's secret lan- 
guage, 31; on linguistic invention, 
31-32. 

Chubb, on the synthetic process in 
teaching reading, 181. 

Collins, on aphasic patients learning 
to read, 187; on the imagery in- 
volved in graphic expression, 199- 
201. 

Committee on Modem Languages, on 
method in teaching Greek and 
Latin, 311-312; on time for learn- 
ing a modern language, 314 (Note); 
on the teaching of grammar, 315- 
316 (Note); on the place of declen- 
sions in German grammar, 317- 
318; on translations, 319-320. 

Comparative fimction, 10 5-1 10. See 
Adjective, Adverb, Function. 

Compayre, on the beginning of par- 
ticularization in the primitive cry, 3. 

Composition, development of effi- 
ciency in, 279-297; the Spcncerian 
theory respecting style, 279-281; 
Spencer on efficiency in style, 
279-280 (Note); Mathews on 
Spencer's theory, 281; the esthetic 



339 



340 



INDEX 



function of language undervalued 
by Spencer, 281-284; Spencer on 
rhythmical structiire, 283 (Note); 
expressions securing reaction with- 
out imagery, 284-285; the develop- 
ment of a dynamic style, 285-286; 
types of mind with respect to figura- 
tive expression, 286; James on the 
figurative type, 287; factors influ- 
encing figurative expression, 288- 
289; the study of figurative ex- 
pression, 289-292; the study of 
formal rhetoric, 290-291; Bain on 
rhetorical teaching, 292; method 
of training for efl&ciency in written 
expression, 292-294; influence of 
temperament and feehng on style, 
291-296. See Expression, Graphic 
expression. Oral expression, For- 
eign tongue. 

Conjunction, the appearance of in the 
child's vocabulary, 70-73; con- 
junctions earHest employed, 71-72. 
See Differentiation, Function. 

Content, of terms, changes in, 59-60; 
of familiar words, Barnes on, 148- 
154; of children's words. Chambers 
on, 154-158. 

Conventional Language, infant's reac- 
tion upon, 22-38; spontaneous 
vocal activity, 22-30; views of 
Sully and Kussmaul, 22; Preyer's 
view, 23; vocalization pleasurable 
to the child, 24; effect of social 
stimulation on vocal play, 24; 
function of spontaneous vocahza- 
tion, 25; development of voluntary 
out of spontaneous vocal activity, 
26-27; SuUy on the "rehearsal" 
period in linguistic development, 
26; views of Gross, HaU, Baldwin, 
and others, 26; the infant imitates 
only general vocal activity, 27; 
linguistic abihty of the year-old 
child, 27-28; indiscriminate use of 
conventional terms at the outset, 28; 
presence of objects or actions 
necessary to reinstate words to 
designate them, 28-29; the \asual 
factor in the child's early hnguistic 
imitation, 29-30; distinction be- 
tween play and invention in lin- 
guistic activity, 30-33; Cbris- 
man, Baldwin, et al., on linguistic 
invention, 31-32; understanding 
the meaning of words, 33-34; 
necessity of vital experience for 
correct understanding, 34; Mrs. 



Hall's observation, 34; repertoire 
of children of different ages, 35; 
Shinn, Humphreys, et al., on chil- 
dren's vocabularies, 36; influence 
of associates in hastening adoption 
of, 53- 

Copula, omission of in early sentence 
construction, 51-52. 

Connan, on the learning of spelling, 
208. 

Darwin, on the beginning of particu- 
larization in the primitive cry, 3. 

Dearborn, on the learning of connec- 
tive words, 66; on the relation of 
familiarity and focal attention, 184. 

Dewey, on interest in motor activities, 
166. 

Differentiation, of original vocal 
sound, 5; of primitive sentence in 
linguistic evolution, 42-43; in ideas 
and speech, relation of, 45; sub- 
stantive and predicate function at 
first undifferentiated, 46; how 
differentiation proceeds, 47; imi- 
tation of in speech without differen- 
tiation in thought, 49; test of in 
thought, 50-51; of the interjection, 
55-56; of adjectival and adver- 
bial function, 57-64; of the prepo- 
sition, 63-70; of the conjunction, 
70-73; of the pronoun, 73-80; of 
experience, effect on specialization 
of sentence elements, 68. 

Efficiency, in oral expression, de- 
velopment of, 232-260; limited to 
special situations, 233-236; due 
partly to native endowment, 236; 
in relation to temperament, 236- 
237; to home training, 238-241; 
in graphic expression, 270; in 
composition, 279-297; in style 
according to Spencer, 279-280 
(Note); in written expression, 
training for, 292-294. 

Egger, on phonetic character of early 
vocalization, 7 (Note). 

Elder, on relationship of different 
language modes, 20. 

Expression, prelinguistic, 1-2 1; earli- 
est vocal expression reflex and un- 
differentiated, i; significance of 
primitive cry according to poets, 
et al., 2 (Note); beginning of par- 
ticularization in primitive cry, 
2-4; Perez, HaU (Mrs.), Darwin, 
Compayre, Hall (G. S.), and 



INDEX 



341 



Preyer, on the beginning of par- 
ticularization, 2-5; cries of different 
infants indistinguishable, 4; cry 
devoid of timbre according to 
Garbini and Egger, 5; how repre- 
sented, 5; according to Preyer, 5; 
Garbini, 5; Wilson, 5; original 
vocal sound, 5; differentiation of, 
5; appearance of consonantal 
sounds, 6; qualities of early 
vocalization, 6; Mrs. Moore on, 7 
(Note); Egger on, 7 (Note); 
interpretation of aided by bodily 
attitudes, 7-8; agreement among 
children in first vocal combinations, 
8; first sounds used without ob- 
jective reference, 9; Phrygian 
parentage of language according 
to story from Herodotus, 8; Miss 
Shinn on first vocal combinations 
of her niece, 9; Axel Preyer's first 
combinations, 9; meanings ac- 
quired through reaction of social 
environment, 9-10; discomfort the 
motive for expression, 10; reflex 
expressional activity not purposeful, 
II (Note); beginning of awareness 
of environment, 11-12; the pri- 
mary principle of expression, 12; 
advent of the smile, 13; Mante- 
gazza on good humor in infancy, 
13; meaning of the true smile, 13; 
first epoch in child's Ufe according 
to Sigismund and others, 14; first 
steps in language proper, 14; 
Egger's transition from cry to 
voice, 14; " cooing " and " crow- 
ing," 14; late acquisition of con- 
ventional language, 15; Preyer on 
his child's first imitation, 15; ex- 
pression of feeling, 15-16; inter- 
pretation of expression of the alter, 
17-18; response to vocal timbre, 
18; to facial expression, 18-19; 
imagery in graphic expression, 
196-197; kinjestetic, 197-198; audi- 
tory and vocal, 199; relation of 
thought and expression, 232-233. 
See Composition, Foreign tongue. 
Graphic expression, Oral expression. 

Figurative expression, development 
of, 285-288; factors influencing, 
288-289; the study of, 289-292. 

Foreign tongue, acquisition of, 298- 
327; the attitude of the learner 
toward the native tongue, • 298; 
tow3Jd a foreign tongue, 299-300; 



different purposes in the teaching 
of ancient and of modern tongues. 



-303; 



Brander Matthews on 



English as a Hving language, 302- 
303 (Note); economy and effi- 
ciency require that the auditory 
and vocal forms of the foreign 
tongue be learned first, 304-306; 
oral work emphasized by Spencer, 
Sweet, Bagster-CoUins, 305 (Note); 
gaining a reading knowledge only 
of a foreign tongue, 306-306; 
Gouin on the relation of visual 
word-ideas to their auditory forms, 
307-308 (Note); composition un- 
necessary, and it may be a hin- 
drance to reading, 310-312; Com- 
mittee on Modern Languages on 
relation of teaching of ancient to 
modern languages, 31 1-3 12; formal 
grammar and rhetoric in the study 
of a foreign tongue, 312-316; 
Spencer on the teaching of grammar, 
313 (Note); Report of Committee 
on Modern Languages on time for 
learning a modern language 314 
(Note); on the teaching of gram- 
mar, 315-316 (Note); intensive- 
ness versus extensiveness in the 
reading of a foreign tongue, 316- 
317; Sweet on critical grammatical 
study, 316 (Note); Committee on 
Modern Languages on declensions 
of nouns in German grammar, 317- 
318 (Note); literal translation of 
a foreign tongue, 318-320; Com- 
mittee on Modern Languages on 
translations in teaching a foreign 
tongue, 319-320; lessons from 
Europe in the teaching of language, 
320-326; practical versus philo- 
logical values, 320-321; beginning 
the study of language early, 322; 
the disadvantages of early gram- 
matical study, 322-324; inter- 
change of native language teachers, 
325; natvuralness in teaching the 
ancient languages, 325-326. See 
Graphic word-ideas. Grammar, 
Language-unities . 
Function, performed by gesture, etc., 
43-45; nominal and verbal un- 
differentiated at first; 46-47; of 
the exclamation, 48; of the inter- 
jection, 54-56; adjectival and 
adverbial, 57-64; prepositional 
and conjunctional, 64-73; Pro- 
nominal, 73-82; of inflection, 86-89; 



342 



INDEX 



verbal function performed by nouns, 
104; of comparative adjectives in 
the beginning, 105-110 ; aesthetic 
function of language undervalued 
by Spencer, 281-284. See Paris of 
speech. 

Garbini, on timbre of cry of child, 5. 

Gouin, on the relation of visual word- 
ideas to their auditory forms, 307- 
308 (Note). 

Grammar, in the acquisition of efiS- 
ciency in expression, 291-292; 
in the learning of a foreign tongue, 
312-316; Spencer on the teaching 
of, 313 (Note). See Foreign 
tongue. Style. 

Graphic expression, processes in, 2 61- 
278; the relation of writing to 
speech, 261-262; skiU in one mode 
does not insure skill in the other, 
263-264; the first step in gaining 
written expression, 264-265; diffi- 
culties in graphic expression for 
the novice, 265-267; structural 
versus psychological simplicity, 268- 
269; economy and efficiency in 
acquiring graphic expression, 270; 
gaining familiarity with elementary 
before complex forms are attacked, 
271; the principle illustrated, 271; 
facility in the use of elements to be 
gained mainly through the use of 
larger unities, 272; the attitude of 
the novice toward punctuation, 
273-274; Lewis on punctuation, 
274-275 (Note); the development 
of a feeling for punctuation, 275- 
276; the individual's needs at 
different stages in linguistic de- 
velopment, 276-277. See Compo- 
sition, Expression, Foreign tongue. 
Language unities. 

Graphic word-ideas, acquisition of, 
194-209; psychological character 
of, 194; method of attaining auto- 
matic execution of, 195-196; visual 
imagery in graphic expression, 196- 
197; kinsesthetic imagery in, 197- 
198; auditory and vocal imagery in, 
199; the interdependence of lin- 
guistic modes revealed in aphasias, 
199-202; Elder's views, 201-202; 
method of teaching spelling, 203- 
209; visual word-ideas more rapidly 
acquired than graphic, 203-205; 
why the child cannot spell all he 
can read, 205; phonic analysis in 



spelling, 205-207; visualizing words, 
206-207; teaching spelling incident- 
ally, 207-208; the principle in- 
volved, 209. 
Gross, on play as a preparation for 
mature hfe, 26, 

Hall, G. S., on the beginning of par- 
ticularization in the primitive cry, 
3; on play as a preparation for 
mature life, 26; on historic schemes 
for teaching the alphabet, 174-177. 

Hall (Mrs.), on the beginning of par- 
ticularization in the primitive cry, 
2; on the child's interpretation of 
conventional language, 34; on the 
child's first apprehension of objects, 
44; on first use of pronouns, 73. 

Hinsdale, on the character of chil- 
dren's reading, 216-217. 

Huey, on motorization in linguistic ac- 
tivity, 173; on words in larger units, 
185 (Note); on value of letters, 186- 
187 (Note); on verbal readers, 
213; on purely visual reading, 224- 
225 (Note). 

Htmiplireys, on the repertoire of an 
eight- months-old child, 36. 

Inflection, of the parts of speech to 
express particularization in thought, 
86-123; specialization of sentence- 
elements, 86-87; oil what depen- 
dent, 86; specialization of the parts 
of speech, 87-88; factors influenc- 
ing the development of inflection, 
89; inflection of the noun, 89-91; 
irregular forms, 90-91; of the 
pronoun, 91-93; order of mastery 
of inflected forms, 93; difficulties 
in mastering inflected forms of the 
verb, 93-94; illustrations of the 
principle, 94; difficulties with tense 
forms, 94-95; the adjectival char- 
acter of tense forms, 95-97; the 
future perfect tense, 98; the past 
tense, 98-99; the future tense, 99- 
102; the use of " shall " and " will," 
101-102; the mastery of modal 
forms, 102; the mastery of auxil- 
iaries, 102-103; nouns performing 
verbal function, 104-105; inflec- 
tion of the adjective and the adverb, 
105-110; comparative function in 
the beginning, 105-107; first in- 
flected forms, 107-108; the super- 
lative degree, 108-109; the ex- 
pression of lower and lowest de- 
grees, 109-110. 



INDEX 



343 



Inheritance, linguistic, social not 
physical, 124-126. 

Interjection, 54-56; much of child's 
speech interjectional in function, 
55; examples of interjectional func- 
tion, 56. See Differentiation, Func- 
tion. 

Interpretation of expression, aided by 
bodily attitudes, 7-8; interpretation 
of the alter, 17-18; interpretation 
of conventional language, 33-37; 
the child often assigns concrete 
meaning to abstract symbols, 129; 
concrete terms often too broad in 
meaning, 129-130; concrete terms 
again often used too narrowly, 131; 
the theory of parallelism in evolu- 
tion of ideas and linguistic abiUty, 
132-133; reaction of the alter in 
determining meaning, 137-138. See 
Conventional language. 

James, on the figvirative type of mind, 
287-288. 

Kussmaul, on the character of chil- 
dren's vocal activities, 22. 

Language-unities, in reading, 1 68-170 ; 
evolution from lower to higher 
unities, 180-183; mastery of the 
less important words in sentence 
unities, 184-186; facility in use of 
elementary to be gained mainly 
through the use of larger unities, 
272. 

Le Fevre, on development of grammat- 
ical categories, 43 (Note). 

Lewis, on oral reading, 228 (Note); 
on punctuation, 274-275 (Note). 

Matthews, on Spencer's theory of style, 
281; on English as a living lan- 
guage, 302-303 (Note). 

Meaning, development of for verbal 
symbols, 124-162; Hnguistic in- 
heritance social not physical, 124- 
126; experience and environment 
as affecting meaning, 125; evolu- 
tionary change in meaning, 126-127; 
all words originally had physical 
reference, 126-127; the child often 
assigns concrete meaning to abstract 
symbols, 125; concrete terms often 
too broad in meaning, 129-130; 
observations of Darwin and Preyer, 
130; how accounted for, 130; how 
corrected, 131; concrete terms are 



again often used too narrowly, 131; 
the theory of parallelism in evolu- 
tion of ideas and linguistic ability, 
132-133; studies of Binet, Hall, 
Barnes, et al., on children's defini- 
tions, 133-134; Chamberlain's stud- 
ies on a child's definitions, 134- 
136; reaction of the alter in deter- 
mining meanings, 137-142; the 
principle illustrated, 137-138; how 
words are moulded into proper 
shape, 139-140; the child's vocabu- 
lary a growing organism, 140-141; 
Chambers on the development of 
meaning for words, 141-142; ap- 
perception in reaction upon words 
of similar form and content, 142- 
144; upon specialized terms, 144— 
146; meaning as felt before it be- 
comes definitive, 146-147; Barnes 
on content of familiar words, 148- 
154; Chambers on content of 
children's words, 154-158; diffi- 
culties with terms denoting time 
relations, 158-159; terms denoting 
space relations substituted for those 
denoting time relations, 159-160; 
difficulties with " than," " neither 
. . . nor," and other constructions, 
160-161. 

Method, of apprehending objects at 
first, 44; of phonic analysis, 188- 
191; of teaching spelling, 203-209; 
of training for efficiency in written 
expression, 292-294; in teaching 
Greek and Latin, 31 1-3 12; of 
gaining meaning most economi- 
cally, 221-222. 

Mode, in the child's speech, 102. 

Modifier, requirement for correct use 
of, 57-58; early use of qualifying 
terms, 58; development of par- 
ticularizing function, 58-60; the 
adjectives earliest used, 60-63; ^^^ 
development of adverbial function, 
63-64; inflected forms of adjectives 
first used, 107-108. See Inflection^ 
Differentiation, Function. 

Motorization, in the child's linguistic 
experience, 166; as emphasized 
by Dewey, Patrick, Oppenheim, 
et al., 166; Huey on, in linguistic 
activity, 173-174. 

Noun, child's use of, 46-47; nominal 
and verbal function not differen- 
tiated at first, 46-47; inflection of, 
89-91; as performing verbal func- 



344 



INDEX 



tion, 104-105. See Differentiation, 
Function. 

Oral expression, development of effi- 
ciency in, 232-260; relation of 
thought and expression, 232-233; 
efficiency limited to special situa- 
tions, 233-236; efficiency due partly 
to native endowment, 236; rela- 
tion of temperament to efficiency, 
236-237; efficiency as a racial 
matter, 237; efficiency in relation 
to home training, 237-238; group 
activities in relation to efficiency, 
238-241; effect of playmates on 
oral expression, 240-241; the short- 
comings of the school in training 
oral expression, 241-242; lin- 
guistic training in all studies, 242- 
245; formal oral expression in the 
class room, 243; the psychological 
moment for instruction in expres- 
sion, 244; the complete sentence, 
244-245 (Note); the topical reci- 
tation, 245-246; formal language 
exercises, 246-248; study and use 
a unitary process, 248-249; merits 
and defects of " tell it in your own 
words," 249-250; the influence of 
models after adolescence, 250-251; 
linguistic training in secondary 
schools, 251-252; the value of de- 
bating and literary societies, 252- 
253; reading focalizes verbal ele- 
ments, 253-254; the child's first 
reading simpler than his oral ex- 
pression, 255; later reading more 
complex, 255; oral expression in- 
fluenced by reading during middle 
period, 255-256; conditions under 
which reading will influence oral 
expression, 257-258. 

Owen, on distinction between inter- 
jection and exclamation, 54 (Note). 

Pantomime, as aiding interpretation, 
7-8; gesture as performing gram- 
matical function, 43-45; pronomi- 
nal function first discharged by, 

75-77- 

Particularization, in primitive cry, 3; 
beginning of, 2-4; Compayre, Dar- 
win, Perez, Hall (Mrs.), HaU (G. S.), 
and Preyer on, 2-5. 

Parts of speech, in early linguistic de- 
velopment, 39-85; Tracy on chil- 
dren's vocabularies, 39; Tracy's 
method of classification, 40; the 



sentence-word in child speech, 40- 
41; also in adult and primitive 
speech, 41-42; differentiation of 
parts of speech in linguistic evolu- 
tion, 42-43; grammatical function 
performed by gesture, etc., 43; 
LeFevre on grammatical categories 
in phylogenesis, 43 (Note); Mrs. 
Hall on the method of apprehend- 
ing objects at first, 44; the child's 
attitude toward things at first 
qualitative, 45; relation of differ- 
entiation in ideas and speech, 45; 
substantive and predicate functions 
at first undifferentiated, 46; how 
differentiation proceeds, 47; the 
function of the exclamation, 48; 
verbal without thought differentia- 
tion, 49; test of differentiation in 
thought, 50-51; illustrations from 
Preyer and Bagley, 50 (Note); 
omission of copula in early sentence 
construction, 51-52; influence of 
associates in hastening adoption of 
conventional forms, 53; interjec- 
tional function, 54-56; interjec- 
tions in child's vocabulary accord- 
ing to Tracy, Salisbury, Kirkpatrick, 
and Mrs. Hall, 54-55; origin of 
human speech inter jectional in 
character according to Aston, 55; 
boys' fondness for " strong " lan- 
guage, 56; adjectival and adverbial 
function, 57-64; requirements for 
the correct use of modifiers, 57-58; 
early use of qualifying terms, 
58; development of particularizing 
function, 58-59; change in content 
of terms, 59-60; apperception in 
the use of adjectives, 60; adjectives 
first used by the child, 60-61; influ- 
ence of development and environ- 
ment on the use of adjectives, 61; ] 
use of abstract adjectival terms, 
61-63; development of adverbial 
function, 63-64; adverbs earliest 
used, 63-64; Mrs. Moore on the use ] 
of " there " and " where," 64; 
children's use of adverbs at close of 
second year, 64; absence of con- 
nective terms in child's speech, 64- 
66; prepositional function in primi- 
tive language, 65; emergence of 
prepositional function, 60-61; 
Powell on prepositions in Indian 
languages, 67; grammatical versus 
psychological function in the use of 
prepositions, 67-69; true preposi- 



INDEX 



345 



tional function, 69-70; appearance 
of conjunctional function, 70; 
situations calling forth conjunc- 
tional function earliest, 70-71; 
conjunctions first used, 71-73; the 
late differentiation of the pronoun, 
73 ; observations of Ament, Schultze, 
Mrs. Hall, 73; Brinton on the use of 
pronouns in aboriginal American 
languages, 74; Powell on pronouns 
in Indian language, 74-75; the use 
of the pronoun in relation to the 
development of the sense of ego and 
alter, 75; pronominal function first 
discharged by pantomime, etc., 75- 
77; increase of symbohzation with 
development, 77; evolution of pro- 
nominal out of nominal function, 
77-78; why the child passes through 
the nominative stage, 78-80; order 
of development in use of pro- 
nouns, 80-82; eflfect of social ex- 
perience on use of pronouns, 82. 
See Differentiation, Function. 

Perez, on the beginning of particu- 
larization, 2. 

Pfiel, on pronouns first used, 80. 

Phonic analysis, purpose of, 186-188; 
Huey on phonic elements in read- 
ing, 186-187 (Note); danger of 
formal phonic drill, 188; method of, 
189-191; in spelling, 205-207. 

Powell, on the preposition in Indian 
languages, 67; on the pronoun in 
Indian languages, 74-75. 

Preposition, in primitive language, 65 ; 
emergence of prepositional func- 
tion, 60-61; Powell on, in Indian 
languages, 67; grammatical versus 
psychological function, in use of, 
67-69; true prepositional function, 
69-70. 

Preyer, on the beginning of particu- 
larization, 4; on early imitation, 
15; on name more definite than 
pro-name, 78. 

Pronoun, late differentiation of, 73; 
as first observed by Ament, Schultze, 
Mrs. Hall, 73; Brinton on use of 
in aboriginal American languages, 
74; in Indian languages, accord- 
ing to Powell, 74-75; use of in rela- 
tion to the development of sense of 
ego and alter, 75; evolution of 
pronominal out of nominal func- 
tion, 77-78; order of development 
in use of, 80-82; effect of social 
experience on use of, 82; inflection 



of, 91-93; order of mastery of 
inflected forms, 93; relative, 112- 

Punctuation, attitude of novice 
toward, 273-274; Lewis on, 274- 
275 (Note); development of a 
feeling for, 275-276;- the indi- 
vidual's needs at different stages of 
linguistic development, 277. 

Quantz, on rapid and slow readers, 
226-227. 

Reading, development of meaning for 
word-ideas, 211-231; the coales- 
cense of word- and meaning-ideas, 
211; conditions for ready coales- 
cence, 212-213; reading without 
translation, 213-214; Huey on 
verbal readers, 213; word-ideas and 
meaning-ideas must run parallel, 
214-218; De Brath on words with- 
out meaning, 215-216 (Note); 
Hinsdale on olden-time reading 
books, 216-217; the effect of domi- 
nating feeling on the mastery of 
word-ideas, 217-218; introduction 
of word-ideas not wholly deter- 
mined by content, 218; acquiring 
meaning through definition, 219- 
220; Chambers on use of diction- 
ary, 220 (Note); the most economi- 
cal method of gaining meaning, 
221-222; reducing the auditory and 
vocal processes in reading to a 
minimum, 223-225; Huey on 
purely visual reading, 224-225 
(Note); cultivating eye-mindedness 
in reading, 226-228; Quantz on 
slow versus rapid readers, 226-227; 
the test of successful reading, 228- 
229; Chubb, on the synthetic 
process of teaching, 181; in a 
foreign tongue, intensiveness versus 
extensiveness, 316-317. See For- 
eign tongue. Language-unities, 
Word-ideas. 

Recitation, topical, 245-246; merits 
and defects of " tell it in your own 
words," 249-250. 

Rhetoric, factors influencing figura- 
tive expression, 288-289; the study 
of figurative expression, 289-292; 
the study of formal rhetoric, 290- 
291; Bain on rhetorical teaching, 
292. 

Rice, on the teaching of reading, 189- 
190. 



346 



INDEX 



Rzesintzek, on first use of pronoun, 

80. 

Salisbury, on interjection in child's 

vocabulary, 54. 
Schultze, on first use of pronouns, 

73- 

Sentence, child's use of elliptical sen- 
tence, 5 1-52 ; order of words in early 
construction of, 113-117; use of 
complete sentence, 244-245 (Note). 
See Differentiaiion, Function, Pan- 
tomime. 

Sentence method, in reading, 178; 
relation of word and sentence in the 
beginning, 178-180. See Lan- 
guage-unities. 

Sentence-word, in child's speech, 40- 
41; in adult and primitive speech, 
41-42; differentiation of parts of 
speech in linguistic evolution, 42- 
43; grammatical function per- 
formed by gesture, etc., 43; Le- 
Fevre on grammatical categories in 
phylogenesis, 43 (Note); relation 
of differentiation in ideas and 
speech, 45. See Differentiation, 
Function. 

Shinn, on child's vocal combinations, 
9; on meaningless syllables, 15; 
on repertoire of eleven-months-old 
child, 36. 

Sigismund, on first epochs of child's 
life, 14. 

Smile, advent of, 13; meaning of, 13; 
first epoch in child's life according 
to Sigismund and others, 14. 

Space relation, terms descriptive of 
substituted for terms denoting time 
relation, 159-160. 

Spelling, method of teaching, 203- 
209; visual word-ideas more rapidly 
acquired than graphic, 203-205; 
why children cannot spell all they 
can read, 205; phonic analysis in, 
205-207; visualizing words, 206- 
207; teaching spelling incidentally, 
207-208. 

Spencer, on efficiency in style, 279- 
280; on rhythmical structure, 283 
(Note); on teaching grammar, 313 
(Note). 

Strieker, on importance of motor ele- 
ments in language, 172 (Note). 

Style, dynamic, development of, 285- 
286; influence of temperament and 
feeling on, 291-296. 

Sully, on child's babbling, 22. 



Sweet, on critical grammatical study, 
316 (Note). 

Teaching, the alphabet, historic 
schemes for, 174-177; spelling, 
method of, 203-209; rhetorical, 
basis of, 292; purpose of ancient 
and modern languages, 302-303; 
of grammar, 315-316; of declensions 
in German grammar, 317-318; of 
translations, 319-320; of languages 
according to European practice, 
320-326. See Automaticity, Lan- 
guage-unities, Foreign tongue. 

Tense forms, difficulties with, 94-95; 
adjectival character of, 95-97; the 
future perfect tense, 98; the past 
tense, 98-99; the future tense, 99- 
102; the use of " shall " and " will," 
101-102. 

Time relation, difficulties with terms 
denoting, 158-159. 

Tracy, on children's vocabularies, 39. 

Training, in oral expression, short- 
comings of the school in, 241-242; 
linguistic, in all studies, 242-245; 
formal oral expression in the class- 
room, 243; the psychological mo- 
ment for training expression, 244; 
in secondary schools, 251-252. 

Verb, nominal and verbal, function 
undifferentiated at first, 46-47; 
omission of copula in early sentence 
construction, 51; forms of, 93-94; 
difficulties in mastering inflected 
forms of, 93-94. 

Vocabulary, methods of classifying, 
39; Tracy on, 39; Tracy's method 
of classification, 40; interjections 
in child's, according to Tracy, 
Salisbury, Kirkpatrick, and Mrs. 
Hall, 54-55; absence of connec- 
tives in child's speech, 64-66; 
child's vocabulary as a growing 
organism, 140-14 1; vocabularies 
of children of different ages, 35; 
Shinn, Humphreys, et al., on, 36. 

Voice play, pleasurable to the child, 
24; effect on, of social stimulation, 
24; function of, 25; development 
of voluntary out of spontaneous 
vocal activity, 26-27. 

Wilson, on original vocal sound, 5. 

Word-ideas, acquisition of, 163-193; 
attitude of child toward surround- 
ing objects, 163-164; visual verbal 



INDEX 



347 



forms of little significance to novice, 
164-165; interest in reading not 
native to the child, 165; how he 
differs from the adult beginning a 
foreign language, 166 ; his interest in 
motor activities, 166; emphasized 
by Dewey, Patrick, Oppenheim, 
et al., 166; children interested not 
in word-form but in meaning, 167; 
language-unities in reading, 168- 
170; the difficulty of visual per- 
ception of verbal forms, 170; de- 
vices for learning the letters, 170- 
171; processes in tracing a letter, 
171-172; Huey on motor factor in 
word-ideas, 173-174; Hall on his- 
toric schemes for teaching the 
alphabet, 174-177; wastefulness of 
the alphabetic method, 177-178; 
relation of word and sentence in the 
beginning, 178-180; evolution from 
lower to higher unities, 180-183; 



Chubb on the synthetic process in 
reading, 181; the mastery of the 
less important words in sentence- 
unities, 184-186; Huey on con- 
nective and relational words, 185 
(Note); purpose of phonic analysis, 
186-188; Huey on phonic elements 
in reading, 186-187 (Note); danger 
of formal phonic drill, 188; method 
of phonic analysis, 1 89-191. See 
A utomaticity. Language - unities y 
Reading. 
Word order, in early sentence con- 
struction, 117; lack of uniformity 
in, 113-115; the sequence of ideas 
in the sentence, 116-117; the order 
of ideas and their expression, 117; 
in negative constructions, 1 17-120; 
the affirmative precedes the nega- 
tive, 1 1 7-1 19; the double negative, 
119. 



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